Eating Cardboard Cake: Behind the Culinary Spot Challenging Gluten-Free Misconceptions
When it comes to gluten-free food, the Wholegreen Bakery is used to a challenging misconception: “It tastes like cardboard.”
That’s why they teamed up with The Hallway to develop 'The Cardboard Cake'; a cake that visually resembles cardboard but boasts delicious flavours.
Through a rigorous design process, including developing a bespoke baking tray and premium ingredients like butterscotch and cocoa powder, the cake seeks to prove that gluten-free doesn't mean compromising on taste.
With a limited release and a compelling short film, the campaign aims to showcase that gluten-free diets can still offer enjoyable culinary experiences.
Speaking to LBB, Cherie Lyden, founder of Wholegreen Bakery, and the team at The Hallway, including creative directors Dan Saunders and Aldo Ferretto and creative tech and innovation director Kent Boswell, break down the campaign.
The team shares insights into crafting a delectable treat that challenges perceptions of gluten-free food.
LBB> What inspired the initial concept of ‘'The Cardboard Cake'?
Dan and Aldo> Our head of strategy, Graham Sweet, gave us a really solid brief. The tension was right on point, and it was clear that his insight about “gluten-free food tastes like cardboard” was bang on. So we set out to make cardboard taste delicious. The next conversation was about exactly what shape it would take. We talked about making a delicious cardboard croissant and a baguette, but after a few rounds, it was clear that we needed to go after the king of every bakery, the cake. So in partnership with Coeliac Australia, The Cardboard Cake was born.
LBB> Can you elaborate on the design and production process of creating a cake that resembles cardboard but tastes delicious?
Dan and Aldo> Wholegreen Bakery has won twice at the Royal Sydney Fine Food Awards, Becoming pastry champion of the year against traditional gluten-filled pastries. So we knew from the beginning that making it delicious wouldn't be a problem. Making it look like cardboard, on the other hand, was tremendously daunting. From a design perspective, the cake had to look like cardboard in texture, colour and shape absolutely. We stacked layers of corrugated cardboard on top of one another and then cut them into a cardboard block. That became our North Star.
Kent> After months of meticulous R&D involving CAD models, rapid prototyping, bespoke metal fabrication (to create the unique corrugated ‘cardboard’ effect), and detailed flavour profiling, we finally landed on The Cardboard Cake. Who would have thought it would nearly take a year to make a cake!?
LBB> How did Wholegreen Bakery ensure that 'The Cardboard Cake' met Coeliac-Australia accreditation standards while still being visually appealing and tasty?
Cherie> 'The Cardboard Cake' met Coeliac Australia accreditation by being made in our Coeliac Accredited manufacturing kitchen with 100% gluten-free ingredients.
LBB> What challenges did you encounter while developing the bespoke baking tray for mass production of 'The Cardboard Cake'?
Kent> There were many obstacles on this project, but one of the most complex pieces of the puzzle to solve was getting the baking tray spot on with nanometre precision. The reason for the complexity is the tray needed to give us a sheet of pastry with perfect corrugation and a thickness that resembled ‘cardboard’. If the pastry was too thick, it didn’t look like cardboard; if it was too thin, it was too delicate to handle and would crumble and break into pieces. The sweet spot we landed on was a gap in the baking tray that gave us a pastry thickness of 1.57mm.
LBB> How do you plan to market and promote 'The Cardboard Cake' to challenge misconceptions about gluten-free food?
Dan and Aldo> With a $0 media budget, we needed a way to promote this through non-traditional streams. We decided to launch during Coeliac Awareness Week, as there was a lot of natural cultural commentary around Coeliac disease that week. Then we launched through direct response.
The cake was hand delivered and couriered to Celebrity Chefs, Coeliac Influencers, and a range of carefully chosen Celebrities. The story was picked up globally, with the most recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Food Sydney culminating in just over $2M in earned media. It's also currently the most viewed reel on Urban List, with over 6.3M views and counting.
LBB> Can you share any insights into the flavour profiling process used to ensure that 'The Cardboard Cake' tastes as impressive as it looks?
Cherie> The flavours came together partly with the design process. The Cardboard Cake is made of layers of sweet pastry that was coloured with coffee to look like the cardboard colour. Golden syrup was added to soften the sweet pastry slightly, so it was softer to eat like a cake yet still strong enough to create the cardboard structure.
Then the filling was designed to hold the sweet pastry structure together whilst creating the shadow that rippled cardboard makes. We used milk chocolate as it was the right colour and sweetness. But we needed to make the flavoury more intense as you couldn't really taste it between all those layers of pastry. So we added black cocoa for that intense flavour. But again, chocolate is so predictable, so we added butterscotch to create that unexpected nostalgic memory from the past. It created another layer of flavour that many people knew the taste of but couldn't quite put their finger on it. The Cardboard Cake taste sensation leaves people guessing and going back for more.
LBB> What impact do you hope 'The Cardboard Cake' will have on changing perceptions of gluten-free food among sceptics?
Dan and Aldo> I suppose we hope to dispel the myth that gluten-free food tastes like cardboard. And that through eateries such as Wholegreen Bakery, being diagnosed with Coeliac disease isn't a life sentence of eating boring tasteless food anymore. We're also hoping to raise awareness of the disease, as over 20% of people go undiagnosed and as such, have real health issues.
LBB> Are there any plans to extend the availability of 'The Cardboard Cake' beyond the limited release period?
Dan> We're currently working on a top-secret project. We could tell you, but we'd have to eat you.
Aldo> Something is cooking.
LBB> How does 'The Cardboard Cake' fit into Wholegreen Bakery's broader mission of providing exceptional gluten-free baked goods?
Cherie> Wholegreen Bakery's mission is to provide delicious baked goods that are 100% gluten-free. The Cardboard Cake is simply one of our delicious baked goods that doesn't look or taste gluten-free.
LBB> Can you discuss the significance of accompanying the launch of 'The Cardboard Cake' with a short film and what message the film conveys?
Dan and Aldo> We wanted to tease the cake in a beautiful way, but most importantly, we wanted to convey the vengeful/dantesque nature of the idea and this aim to prove a lot of people wrong: “To all those who ever said gluten-free tastes like cardboard, you’re about to eat your words”.
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