You Should Think Twice Before Trying TikTok's Fluffy Popcorn Trend

While there are plenty of TikTok food trends worth trying (such as sushi bakes and cloud bread), some of the recipes appearing on the popular social media site are better left untested. Take fluffy popcorn, a sweet and decadent snack that has taken the platform by storm. At a glance, fluffy popcorn seems like a perfectly harmless, if not cloyingly sweet, snack. While variations abound, the basic recipe includes popcorn, butter, marshmallows, cake mix, and some sort of candy topping. The butter and marshmallows are melted in a pot, to which the cake mix is added. And that's where issues arise, as consuming undercooked cake mix can lead to a potentially serious bout of foodborne illness.

The culprit is the raw flour in the mix, which is one of the many foods the CDC cautions consumers to avoid, along with uncooked meat and unpasteurized milk. As explained by the CDC, flour does undergo processing, such as bleaching, but harmful bacteria will only be eliminated if the raw flour is properly cooked. While heat is used to melt the butter and marshmallows, raw flour must reach 160 degrees Fahrenheit to ensure safety. And if you think that consuming raw flour or uncooked cake mix is unlikely to cause health problems, think again. Food poisoning outbreaks associated with these foods have occurred frequently since 2016, and a 2021 outbreak potentially caused by raw cake mix affected people in 12 states and even led to hospitalizations.

Without raw cake mix in the recipe, the viral fluffy popcorn snack is perfectly safe to eat. However, you may want to replace the missing ingredient with something equally enticing to live up to the spirit of the original recipe. In this case, ingredients like whipped cream, powdered sugar, and powdered milk are great substitutes, although you'll need to heat the mixture for the best results. There are also simple peanut butter popcorn recipes featuring inclusions like peanut butter, peanuts, honey, and vanilla.

If you're looking for a no-bake recipe, try using instant pudding instead. Using vanilla pudding and white chocolate chips in the fluffy popcorn recipe will make for a sweetly indulgent snack. You can also use pre-made pudding snack packs in a pinch, which leaves you with a whole range of flavors to choose from (including chocolate, vanilla, butterscotch, banana cream, and many others). Not all viral TikTok recipes are winners, but you can certainly use these foods as inspiration for your own tasty snack creations.