Bakery debuts ‘toilet paper’ cake to show your loved ones they’re essential during coronavirus

Sunmerry Bakery announced its new “toilet paper” cake on Monday afternoon, and two hours later, it was sold out.

Victoria Chuang, Sunmerry’s marketing specialist, and Peter Kao, Sunmerry’s owner who operates all the U.S. locations of the Taiwanese bakery, knew that their customers were missing their freshly baked breads and cakes, which are now available in limited quantities.

Before the coronavirus crisis, Sunmerry had five locations in Southern California, including Irvine, but it closed the Monterey Park and Arcadia stores.

While customers can order their Happy Lemon boba tea drinks through Grubhub, the bakery does only cake and bread deliveries to Irvine on Saturdays, to Rowland Heights on Wednesdays and to the rest of the San Gabriel Valley on Mondays and Thursdays.

So Chuang and Kao wanted to cheer up their customers with a new cake.

At first, they thought about making a face mask cake, but this was before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started recommending mask wearing in the U.S.

So instead, they worked with their head chef, Bruce Dai, to design a toilet paper cake, a nod to the high demand for toilet tissue during the coronavirus outbreak.

It’s a four-layer chocolate chiffon spongecake, layered with an Oreo cookie filling and covered with white chocolate.

“It’s so you can send it to a friend to say that you are essential to me and that’s why I got this cake,” Chuang said. “We just wanted to lighten the mood.”

The cake is available in limited quantities for a brief period of time, so Chuang recommends calling the store for availability before ordering. Though it’s currently sold out, the bakery plans to restock on Wednesday.

Tseng writes for Times Community News.