If you are hungry, best look away now – this article contains images of cakes, cookies, brownies and other drool-worthy treats that might turn you ravenous.
There is, of course, every chance you are used to pictures like the ones above and below.
Instagram feeds these days are increasingly stuffed with the type of seductive food photography that should carry the culinary equivalent of a triple X rating.
With the rise of Instagram and Tik Tok, dessert shops and bakeries have perfected the art of the decadent social media post as they tempt customers to visit their outlets or order through an online store.
In the north-east, this has resulted in a swathe of new bakeries, ice-cream shops and other sweet treats over the past year.
Outlets such as Aberdeen’s Fat Batch, which grew from an Instagram feed into one of the busiest food venues in the city, or Gooey Delights in Peterhead are attracting lots of attention even as some cafes and pubs face falling footfall and the threat of closure from rising costs.
Behind many of these enterprises are female entrepreneurs talking to a customer base – many of them also young women – eager for their wares.
“I was just thinking that myself,” says Amanda Charles, owner of Cookie Cult, an Aberdeen bakery that makes huge, chunky New York-style cookies for delivery and events.
“Bakes seem to be thriving.”
A new type of entrepreneur
Amanda is representative of the new wave of bake shop entrepreneurs. Twenty-nine years old, she is hard-working, ambitious and breezily engages with customers via social media.
Meanwhile, she posts Instagram pics of her giant cookies that have people positively drooling.
“When I first started, no one was really doing this sort of cookie,” she says. “It was something new that people hadn’t really tried before. Also, of course, they are delicious.”
Amanda is more aware than most just how important Instagram photos are to her business. Her company emerged from her own online obsession with New York City’s Levain Bakery, which bakes a similar style of stuffed cookie and has almost 400,000 Instagram followers.
From the outset, Amanda was posting pictures of her bakes online and reaching out to potential customers.
“It’s definitely helped my business grow,” she says.
“It’s a visual thing at first,” explains Alex Cain, owner of Holy Moly Bakes in Huntly. “If you can make it look really attractive and appealing, that’s what’s going to draw people in.”
Marshmallow stuffing and Kit Kat caramel decadence
The social media furnace, however, needs constant tending. Like many of the newer bake shops, Amanda and Alex are always creating new recipes to catch the eye, and tempt the tastebuds.
Amanda’s current ideas include a white chocolate Ferrero Rocher-style cookie, a Kinder and Nutella mash-up stuffed with marshmallow and a caramel cookie based around a recently-launched Kit Kat flavour.
Then there are the favourites – the cookies that always wow the Instagram crowd. Confections such as Amanda’s red velvet cookie (“Very Instagrammable,” she says) and a triple chocolate cookie (“That definitely does stand out”).
“Everybody’s looking for the next new thing that will be able to Instagram, so you want it to look good,” she adds.
For Alex at Holy Moly, the new wave of bake shops have latched on to the philosophy of the bigger the better.
“Everything’s just getting bigger and fatter,” she says. “We’ve taken a lot of influences from America, and America has always had big bakes. Everything there has always been huge.”
‘I worry that these products are no longer a treat size’
Lurking at the back of this Instagram frenzy are clear questions over whether social media marketing by bakeries is too excessive.
Are multiple posts and reposts of high-sugar foods desirable in a country where obesity rates are increasing, bringing with them a rise in obesity-related illnesses such as type-2 diabetes?
Experts also worry about the new-style of Instagram-friendly bakes that are often oversized to attract the most attention.
“These cakes and cookie look lovely, but portion size influences how much we eat, the more that is offered we tend to eat more,” says Alexandra Johnstone, a nutrition scientist at Aberdeen’s Rowett Institute who specialises in obesity, nutrition and disease work.
“I worry that these products are no longer a treat size.”
Professor Johnstone recommends sharing bakes with friends, which incidentally is the same message bakers themselves put out
The cookies, brownies and brookies often come served in a small pizza-parlour-style cardboard box, so the idea is to make the treat last or give to friends as a gift.
The bakes that break 1,000 calories
Meanwhile, the bakeries maintain that their bakes – often priced at around £3 – are not for frequent consumption.
“It’s not an everyday thing,” says Haroon Ahmed, co-owner of Shakes ‘n’ Cakes. Haroon last week opened a new branch of his Aberdeen chain in Inverness.
“Maybe a curry is twice to three times a week, but a crepe will be once a week.”
Since Cookie Cult’s inception, Amanda has felt a responsibility to customer health.
Her cookies weigh in at around 500-600 calories, which according to Amanda is about half the number in bakes from other bakeries popular on Instagram.
“Some companies make them bigger than my cookies,” says Amanda, who points out that small-scale bakeries don’t have a legal requirement to disclose calorie content. “I was very conscious of how many calories would be in them.”
Alex has fewer concerns because she knows we all need to spoil ourselves sometimes.
Asked if she thinks about the calories in her bakes, which include the incredible Scotch Egg – a Creme Egg with a brownie wrapped around it – she says with a laugh: “No.”
“You’re on to a loser if you start doing that.”
She adds: “I think people are quite happy to sacrifice the calories for a nice treat.”
At Shakes ‘n’ Cakes, Haroon believes the ethos of affordable luxury has played a major role in the chain’s expansion in difficult times.
“It’s the excitement of it,” he says. “It makes people smile and lightens people’s mood. People look forward to it.”
Conversation