Illinois Bakery Brings Back ‘Cicada Cakes’ Before May Invasion

This year, May equals double cicada invasion.

May 2024 is right on our doorstep and, while the N*SYNC memes are always great, that's the month that experts are saying cicadas will take over the world (trillions of them) in a once-in-a-lifetime double brood emergence that we're calling cicadapocalypse. It's going to be a very loud summer starting in May and we're going to see cicadas everywhere.

People are even coming up with recipes involving cicadas since we're supposed to get so many of them. Yummy.

But if cooking with them isn't your jam, you can still eat one, kinda.

Cicada Cakes Come Back This Week

This cicada is a lot more appealing to munch on than the actual bug. Bent Fork Bakery in Highwood (a Chicago suburb) is embracing the insect invasion and starting on Wednesday, May 1st, the bug will be in their bakery cases after a 17-year hiatus (like the cicada brood). But like this:

Okay that's a cicada snack I can get behind. NBC Chicago says that it's about the size of an average cupcake. It's either yellow or chocolate cake, It's dipped in chocolate ganache, with white chocolate wings, and red candy for "eyes". And no, there are no actual cicadas in them.

According to the bakery's website, the cicada cakes are $3 and will be available starting May 1st, with no currently set end date.

If you tried one of these snacks, you could still tell people you ate a cicada during the cicadapocalypse. They don't need to know specifics.