Discussion: who knows what jimmies are? There was much discussion around my kitchen table the other day as we were eating some home-made confections…
Apparently jimmies (sprinkles, for those of you who are unfamiliar) must be a local (or regional) term. Is this actually the case? Please let me know in the comments.
What spurred the discussion was my creation of these little ladybug cake confections.
I received one of those “cake pops” pans for Christmas this year. Totally unexpected. I bake a lot of cookies — mostly Italian style biscotti using my Grandmother’s recipe — but I don’t bake cakes.
It’s not that I don’t like cake. It’s just that a cake, even a small one, usually rots on the counter after a few days in this small household. It’s just a waste.
But cake pops on the other hand…are a neat way to economize…
…unless you decorate them, I’ve found. I could have bought a HUGE bakery-made sheet cake — fully themed – for what I paid for candy melts and icing pens, junior mints and confetti and jimmies.
But it was a lot of fun…if not as delicious as I thought they should have been.
Frankly, a slice of cake would have been fine.
But these do look so cute on the counter.
Now… no derisive comments about my decorating skills, okay? I’m a novice.
I really love the ladybugs. Very creative, but then you ARE a writer!
Regarding the jimmies vs. sprinkles debate, controversy ranges far and wide, and the greatest minds of our age are working on the problem, but this site (http://www.slashfood.com/2006/08/06/sprinkles-vs-jimmies/) suggests the distinction is regional.
Hi Steve
Thanks for the cheers for the ladybugs. I got really tired of making those after about 15th one…variations did ensue. Those cake pans make a lot of pops!
(And thanks for doing my research, too. Good to know there’s a historical reason for “jimmies,” which they’ll always be, as far as I’m concerned.)
But you didn’t answer…. what did you grow up saying?
I always called them sprinkles. But then I grew up calling soda “pop.” Some in the Midwest call drinking fountains “bubblers,” but where I was raised they were drinking fountains. Perhaps every state should declare that they speak the best, the purest English, and just invent their own words for everything so if you crossed a border you couldn’t understand what folks on that side were saying. Now there’s a story for you!
Hi Steve
Love the story idea! (But I think you’d be better suited to write it. Make it a steampunk thing!)