This is Dessert After Dark, a special collab edition of the Nightlife Review from Dirt and Cake Zine.
2AM Dessert
Friends of Dirt and Cake Zine tell us which desserts they reach for in the early morning hours.
By Daisy Alioto
We all know the feeling––bare feet on a cool tile floor, the refrigerator’s glow reflecting its contents back to us in our own pupils. Perhaps something has magically appeared––something we never bought, but nonetheless crave. Maybe a stranger will have broken in, taken nothing, and left cake. Or a pint of ice cream is hiding behind a pile of frozen peas…
Alas, it never seems to work that way, does it? But we still make do. In the words of Isle McElroy, “A 2AM dessert cannot be an ideal dessert. It must be merely the best you can get in the moment.” And for the moments when true decadence was truly within our reach, can anything ever live up to the memory? I think not.
Peyton Dix
I’m a grown woman, which means I struggle to digest dairy, so my first go-to late-night snack is a Chloe mango frozen bar. My second favorite late-night snack is a club classic: Toffuti Cuties Vanilla. Every bad bitch I know grew up eating these. And the real bad bitches still do.
Chris Crowley
A regular Snickers Bars sends me into sugar shock, but the Snickers Ice Cream Bar? It’s a perfect piece of snack science, which is why it’s my go-to deli desert, whether I’m coming home sort-of-late, very late, or when I’m off on another frequency and think it (well, two boxes worth) is the one thing missing from my friend GZ’s house party (though, apparently, I was the only one that time).
At 3 a.m., when you are buzzed and convinced that every decision you are making ($27 of Taco Bell; selfies with a thousand yard stare; worse) is one of the best you’ve ever made, the only actual good decision you can make, is to open the Tupperware of whipped cream and eat it spoonful by spoonful. It was made for the cake, but meant for you.
Alicia Kennedy
My ideal 2 a.m. dessert is really cold tiramisu scooped straight from the dish in the fridge. In this fantasy, I'm not blind-drunk but perfectly maintaining ballast and decorum despite the hour. If I'm honest, though, what I'm usually eating at 2 a.m. is non-dairy Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia with extra cherries from my oversize jar of Amarenas that I bought at Costco. Or it's a bag of chips.
Dessert After Dark is presented by Codeword, a communication design agency” building better comms, content, and communities for some of the best brands in the world. See their work and say hi at Codeword.Agency.