The Most Popular Dessert in Your Year of Birth
Well, when you were born, that was probably celebrated with rusks topped with aniseed sprinkles. But which sweets were devoured the rest of the time? In other words: what were the most popular desserts in your year of birth?
The Most Popular Desserts in Your Year of Birth
Dessert lovers, listen up! Do you still remember the taste of these popular desserts?
The 1960s
Alongside homemade desserts such as hangop, rice pudding, watergruwel, semolina pudding, buttermilk porridge, Haagse bluf, oatmeal and Brinta, ready-made (dairy) desserts received a huge boost in the late 1960s. Why? The arrival of the refrigerator! Vla, pudding and yogurt in cartons and bottles. Oh, how convenient. When it came to home baking, the oh-so-exotic pineapple cake did well, as did the good old arretjescake.
In restaurants (back then, only 15 percent of Dutch people ever ate out!), a dame blanche was more or less the ultimate dessert. And speaking of ice cream: the Raketje was launched in 1962!
The 1970s
In the 1970s, the ready-made dessert trend continued apace. Mona played a major role in this: in 1970, they introduced their first ready-made dessert, fruit yogurt. Quite cutting-edge at the time, of course. In 1971, Mona pudding followed in vanilla, coffee and chocolate flavors, and in 1973 came the chocolate mousse. In 1975 came the pudding of all puddings: semolina pudding with red sauce. Mona’s best-selling dessert of all time. Speaking of pudding: Bourbon and Saroma (you know, those pudding packets) were also hugely popular.
In restaurants, the selection was nowhere near as extensive: you could get crêpes suzettes or a dame blanche. And at parties, the chocolate fountain made its debut.
The 1980s
While Mona added bavarois to its range in 1980, the real dessert hit of the 1980s was the trifle. The English dessert made with fruit, custard, whipped cream, cake and alcohol had been around for longer, but made a comeback when Birds marketed it as a new dessert. The French croquembouche, a tall cone of cream puffs mixed with caramel, also did well.
The 1990s
Ice ice baby! It’s no coincidence that this song came out in 1990, because if anything was popular in this decade, it was ice cream. The first Magnum rolled off the production line in 1989 and was—very cleverly—not presented as an “ordinary” ice cream, but as a snack. Just like Snickers and Mars. And do you remember the Winner Taco? It was so popular that a petition was even started when it disappeared from store shelves.
As if all that ice cream wasn’t enough, the down-to-earth Dutch were also introduced to “luxury” ice cream: Australian Homemade arrived in the Netherlands in 1995, followed a year later by Ben & Jerry’s (cookie dough mmmm). But let’s be honest: there’s a greater chance that you simply got a Danoontje (powerrrr) in front of you every evening. Delicious too.
The 2000s
Cupcakes, cupcakes and even more cupcakes. In every kind, color and size. And Tony Chocolonely in 2004. Also in every kind and flavor. You could definitely call this a defining feature of the start of the millennium: “gourmet” chocolate. Chocolate 2.0 with pieces, additions and unusual combinations.
Something Magnum also got into trouble over: their “Seven Sins” ice creams angered some Protestants because they were supposedly blasphemous. It (of course) didn’t stop the ice cream brand from continuing to sell flavors such as Greed (tiramisu ice cream with coffee sauce) and Vanity (vanilla ice cream with champagne sauce).
The 2010s
By now, we switch to a different popular dessert almost every day. Social media will undoubtedly have played a role in that. We went from a macaron craze to cake pops to cronuts and freakshakes, as well as anything with galaxy and unicorn vibes. What appears on restaurant dessert menus also varies enormously. Fortunately, there’s now far more choice than just a dame blanche.
The 2020s
Notably, tiramisu remains just as popular as ever—are we simply longing for the old days, when everything was so pleasantly straightforward?—and we’re also seeing savory desserts appear on menus more and more often. Recently, for example, I had a Portuguese dessert with ice cream made from savory Portuguese cheese. A little strange, but delicious (Rivella, 1990—remember it?)
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