The Forgotten '90s Little Debbie Cakes We Want Back

A lot of last-century babes had favorite foods that they might have thought would last forever, but were soon proven to be as ephemeral as so many TGIF lineups. And a lot of those once-beloved snacks were discontinued on the whims of one mercurial mascot, Little Debbie. For every prevailing Little Debbie treat — your Nutty Buddys, Swiss Rolls, and Cosmic Brownies — there are plenty more that were struck down in their prime, cast aside like so many "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" lunch boxes. Each individually wrapped cookie, pie, and candy bar approximation was great in its own way, but the absence of some, like the spice cake, just seem a bit more pronounced.

Sightings of Little Debbie's spice cake appear to date back to the 1990s, with a suspicious paucity of data about exactly when and why they disappeared from shelves. This mystery is particularly galling when considered in tandem with society's present-day obsession with confectionery "spice," a divisive fixation often preceded by "pumpkin" that this once easily acquired cake, lightly fragrant as it might have been with industrial-quality aromatics like cinnamon and nutmeg, seemed tailor-made to slake. Will Little Debbie deign to tip her big dumb hat and bring back this forgotten dessert product, giving it one last, best, time to shine? Probably not; the brand is riding more recent trends like the whole unicorn thing among its sometimes puzzling classics like the Star Crunch snack cookies. But you can always make your own sweet spice cake at home.

You can easily turn a box of store-bought yellow cake mix into spice cake with little more than the titular seasonings. Should you already have a homemade pumpkin spice blend, a tablespoon or two will do. And even if you have not yet perfected your own melange, you can shake around the same amount of ground cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and optional allspice into the batter just like you'd do for a scratch-made spice cake.

That ye olde Little Debbie cake was also topped with a cream cheese frosting, which is similarly easy enough to whip up with its own eponymous dairy, some confectioners' sugar, butter, vanilla extract, and a pinch of salt. You can even dress that icing up with even more cozy spices to taste. Little bits of something like candied ginger will make the thing darn near artisanal. And, although you probably lack the tools to encase your own goods in crinkly plastic, you can cut them down to handheld size for that fresh-from-the-box effect.