Portillo’s Just Gave Their Secret Lemon Cake Recipe To A Stranger On Reddit
Portillo’s, a restaurant chain born out of their famous Chicago hot dog spot, is well-known for decadent desserts, like their chocolate cake and chocolate cake shake.
Apparently, they also used to carry a lemon cake for around a decade or so before eventually phasing it out of stores. Sadly this was long before social media footage of it existed, so it’s virtually impossible to find a photo or recipe of how to make this cake online.
One Reddit user, however, was determined to get his hands on another Portillo’s lemon cake. User BigBen2010 wrote a post on the site that offered up a $300 bounty for a recipe of or an actual Portillo’s lemon cake.
“I want to eat another Portillo’s lemon cake. If you can find me the exact recipe, with instructions, or find me a place that makes an exact copy I will pay you $300. If you can find out what actually happened to the lemon cake in the first place I will throw in another $30, but that is a bonus only available if you find the cake.”
“This is open to anyone anywhere. I don’t care if you’re in the middle of the Sahara. I will get you $300 if you find me this cake and frosting.”
The internet, of course, got to work, upvoting and spreading the word on this man’s offer as much as possible until it finally made it’s way to somebody at Portillo’s. They decided to go ahead and give the man what he wanted and announced they would be giving BigBen2010 the lemon cake recipe.
While the recipe hasn’t officially exchanged hands yet, the post went viral, with the Portillo’s rep’s comments getting nearly DOUBLE the upvotes of the original post and launching it to one of the most viral posts on Reddit as of yesterday afternoon.
We also learned some interesting things about Portillo’s lemon cake as a result. Betty Crocker actually made the proprietary recipe for Portillo’s, and the only reason they stopped making the cake was that it would literally fall apart by the end of the day. This was due to the icing sliding the cake layers apart and causing one to fall off of the other. Makes sense that you wouldn’t want to see that by day’s end.
Still, it makes one wonder why this gained so much traction. Is it that when companies with massive cult followings like Portillo’s does something awesome or cool for one of their fans, it pops off on the internet? Was it a feel good, happy ending to one man’s quest that is something we all want to see? Or was it the excitement that we’re finally gonna get pictures and possible video of a real Portillo’s lemon cake?
I guess one can never really tell when it comes to the Internet. Still, it’s a great story, and we can’t wait to see a picture of what a Portillo’s lemon cake actually looks like.
