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The Daily SKU
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Brands Satire

Baked By Melissa Kit Makes Tiny Cupcakes, Full-Size Dishes

The minicupcake chain's first at-home kits are now a Target exclusive. The cupcakes are bite-size. The sink is not.

By , CPG & Brands Reporter NEW YORK · · 1 min read

Based on real news: Baked by Melissa enters Target with first at-home cupcake mix (CNBC)

Illustration of one tiny cupcake with pink frosting sitting alone on a huge dark kitchen scale, surrounded by a giant mixing bowl, a large whisk and a full-size muffin pan on a pink background
Judge, on assignment, holding one finished cupcake. Judge could have held 140 more. Illustration: The Daily SKU

NEW YORK—Baked by Melissa's first at-home cupcake kits went on sale at Target, giving families nationwide the chance to make the chain's famous bite-size cupcakes using a mixing bowl, a whisk, a pan, a piping bag and a sink of entirely ordinary size.

Target became the exclusive seller of the kits, along with branded liners and a pan, on Sunday, CNBC reported. Flavors include Christmas Tie-Dye, Marshmallow Hot Cocoa and Red Velvet. Founded in 2008, the brand has nine New York locations, ships nationwide and has about 2.8 million TikTok followers. The deal took roughly a year of approvals, as Target works to win back core shoppers.

I bought a Red Velvet kit and baked it. One finished cupcake weighed 14.2 grams on Judge. The dishes I used weighed 1.48 kilograms, dry. That is a ratio of 104 to 1, dishes to cupcake, which Judge recorded without comment.

"We made 36," said Wes Gundry, a fictional area father in Hoboken who timed the process. "It took two hours and 10 minutes. My children ate them in four minutes, which I am told is the correct amount of time for a bite-size cupcake."

One Batch, By The MinuteFictional time log of an area father making 36 bite-size cupcakes
0 min20 min40 min60 min80 minFrosting 36 tiny tops70 minWashing up45 minMixing15 minEating all of them4 min
One Batch, By The Minute
Frosting 36 tiny tops70 min
Washing up45 min
Mixing15 min
Eating all of them4 min

Source: The Daily SKU Brands Desk; times kept by a fictional father on a stopwatch with frosting on it

"I am told that is the correct amount of time."

The fictional American Council on Home Baking said the kit is part of a growing category of products that are small to eat and large to clean. Its index of 1,200 fictional households found that 81% enjoyed the baking, 94% enjoyed the eating and 3% enjoyed the whisk, which was the 3% who did not wash it.

Gundry said he has already bought a second kit. He has not yet bought a second sink.

At press time Target said the kit pairs well with its full-size dish soap, sold two aisles over.

Celeste Abernathy covers packaged goods and weighs everything first. Judge, her kitchen scale, assisted.

More on Baked by Melissa · Target

The Daily SKU is satire. Headlines and stories riff on real e-commerce, CPG and retail news, but the people, quotes, studies, surveys and most numbers are invented. No real person’s words are made up here. Each article ends with a factual “The Real Story” box and a “Riffing on” line linking the genuine reporting. Not investment advice. Not any kind of advice. About us.

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Riffing on: Baked by Melissa enters Target with first at-home cupcake mix, CNBC