‘Unicorn Food’ Is Colorful, Sparkly and Everywhere

Un arc-en-ciel dans votre assiette.

Des couleurs naturelles sur les aliments ? Pour quoi faire ? Du rouge, du rose, du bleu, du vert, du violet… depuis quelques mois, tous les spectres de l’arc-en-ciel apparaissent dans vos assiettes. Comment est né ce mouvement surprenant ? Jusqu’où peut-il aller ? Avez-vous l’eau à la bouche ou tournez-vous de l’oeil à la vue de ce spectacle ?

For the unaware: “Unicorn food” is any food item jazzed up with dye or cute accessories like fruit cut into little shapes or mountains of pastel marshmallows. The highly committed may add a horn, ears and a mane made of sculpted sugar. This might happen to a cupcake, a piece of toast or a cup of coffee. It has been going on for roughly a year on both social media and in a handful of hip cafes. No unicorns are believed to have been harmed, so far.

2. Adeline Waugh, 27, a health and wellness blogger and food stylist in Miami, inadvertently helped start the trend after experimenting with a natural food dye — beetroot — to “add a pop of color to my photos,” she said. “I was never intending to start a trend. I posted it, and all my followers started saying it looked like a unicorn, so I said you’re right, and I started calling it that too,” she said. “Then all of a sudden all these people were making it and tagging it, and now the unicorn thing has gotten just insane.”

3.Besides imitators, Waugh said she has also gotten attention from book publishers and, of course, online haters who sometimes leave nasty comments under her Instagram pictures. “People get so mad about toast, it is crazy,” she said.

BUT HOW GOOD IS IT?

4. Much of what calls itself “unicorn food” online bears little resemblance to Waugh’s initial creations, which were designed with both nutrition and aesthetic value in mind. The dye is made from cream cheese and crushed up natural ingredients like chlorophyll, for green, or crushed up, freeze-dried blueberries for purple, she said. Her work contains no marshmallows, artificial dye or towering horn-shaped fondants. There is nary a sprinkle in sight.

5.“The cream cheese version really just tastes like cream cheese,” she said. “It doesn’t have a strong flavor. It’s more for aesthetic purposes.”

6.Since then, people — those who eat food and those who just like to photograph it — have gone wild for rainbow bagels, unicorn lattes and the classic sprinkle. Even Starbucks released a unicorn drink last month for a week. “I mean, it’s not like I created unicorns, so I can’t be too mad about it,” Waugh said. “But I definitely think the whole trend took off after my toast extravaganza.”