Cupcakes, ramen and bacon in everything … viral food trends are a taste of days gone by

“Cupcakes … really are incredibly popular,” Zoe Williams told Guardian readers back in 2009, in a piece that now feels contemporaneous with the Bayeux tapestry. “When Pearl Lowe got married a few weeks ago, it was with cupcakes and canapes.” Google had just declared the bake formerly known as a fairy cake the fastest-growing recipe search of the past 12 months, and we at the Guardian were here for it, with options to re-create a red velvet cake with vanilla frosting from Magnolia Bakery (made internationally famous by Sex and the City), Claire Ptak’s perfect strawberry numbers and, should you already be feeling autumnal, Dan Lepard’s rather more wholesome-sounding pumpkin and ginger versions.

A veritable runway of the colourful cakes paraded across the paper’s pages for many years after Carrie Bradshaw had hung up her Manolo Blahniks – Lily Vanilli’s striking black rose, Dan’s orange custard creams – yet by 2020 we were already nostalgic enough for icing quiffs to stage a retrospective of these “retro” classics (such as Kim-Joy’s psychedelic marble cupcakes, pictured top).

Those still mourning the loss of even earlier “viral” foods, as they would certainly not have been called at the time, might enjoy this piece from 2002, which features such tastes of my childhood as sun-dried tomatoes, chicken kiev (as it was) and … Jacob’s Creek (OK, I wasn’t actually drinking that, but I did like the kangaroo on the dinner table).

Time is a cruel mistress indeed, as fans of nouvelle cuisine will attest: the cupcake was soon yesterday’s news, superseded by the cronut (Rhik Samadder politely suggests you do not try this at home) and the unstoppable rise of avocado toast. In fact, the ever-trendy Nigel Slater had already published directions for that way back in 1999, and by October 2015 Jess Cartner-Morley was declaring “the basic brunch of Instagrammers” “overcado”. Apparently, consumers did not agree; I was recently in a cafe that charges £12 for two slices of the stuff. (No, I did not order it.)

The avocado pear has always had a whiff of glamour; kale, however, came from nowhere. This bitter leaf had a remarkable glow-up in the 2010s, going from cattle feed to Beyoncé’s sweatshirt in just a few short years. The Guardian, surely the most kale-aligned of all British newspapers, celebrated this with a collection of recipes including Tom Hunt’s kale and kohlrabi kimchi; Yotam Ottolenghi’s stir-fried kale with tahini, chilli and soy; and Thomasina Miers’s steamed clams with kale, fregola and lemon butter sauce in the archives for your chewing pleasure.

There’s nothing like casting your mind back to food trends you’ve ridden the wave of to make you feel old – cacio e pepe, ramen, bacon in everything, halloumi on everything – even as you find yourself drawn to everything pistachio green, from Philip Khoury’s pistachio and cherry amaretti to Rachel Roddy’s pasta with sage and pistachio pesto, and, of course, the Dubai-born chocolate bar that sparked it all, re-created by Ravneet Gill for Easter this year.

What’s next? Well, given that I’m not on TikTok, I’m probably the last person to ask, but I’m hoping it has nothing to do with cottage cheese. Some trends are better ignored.

Full of beans | We all know we should be eating more fibre-rich beans and pulses, yet the great-value dried sort seem to be ever harder to get hold of in big retailers. No great loss, it turns out, if it encourages specialist retailers into the market: in recent years we’ve had Hodmedods (British and French pulses), Brindisa’s Spanish imports, and now the Heirloom Bean Co finally making the legendary American Rancho Gordo beans available to British consumers. The beautiful, black, speckled scarlet runner beans I cooked up last Friday (just 12 minutes in a pressure cooker) were sweet, creamy and unbelievably delicious simply tossed with garlic, cherry tomatoes, spinach and olive oil.

Fuel de France | It’s the most wonderful time of the year – the first week of the Tour de France, the biggest bike race of them all, and the thing that surely gets more bums on saddles than anything else, even if we’re simply bumbling along the towpath rather than sweating up Mont Ventoux. The average rider burns an estimated 83,000kcal during the three-week race, and former world champion and Olympic medallist Emma Pooley has some help for them in her brilliantly named new book, Oat to Joy. A collection of delicious-looking snacks – cheesy buns, carrot cake cookies – it’s also an “oatobiography” of Pooley’s career. Perfect for those, like me, who believe that life’s too short for energy gels.

Buttered up | Though I found giving up fish and meat for Lent relatively easy, two things I really missed as a temporary vegan earlier this year were yoghurt and butter. I’m obsessed with the yellow stuff, in particular, and the saltier the better. Two standouts: Orkney butter, which is, deliciously, sold only in huge, 500g-plus blocks, and the wonderfully salty Welsh Shirgar, which I wish were more widely sold near me.

Fig rig | The spindly fig tree I inherited when I moved into my flat 11 years ago is now an absolute monster – it usually produces a modest handful of sweet figs around October, but last week I picked three 200g whoppers that were threatening to split in two if I didn’t get to them before the wasps. They were the equal of something you might pay £1 apiece for in a British supermarket, so I’m hoping this is the start of a bumper year. (Fig wasps, FYI, do not care for UK winters.)

Marjorie’s, London | ​“Marjorie’s,” notes Grace Dent, “is alarmingly close to Carnaby Street, the natural habitat of the disappointed diner.” All the more reason to be thankful for the arrival of this “tiny, brave, bespoke and appealingly odd” new central London opening, serving “what might well be the most earnest, accomplished, imaginative food … in this square mile right now”. She concludes: “Go for the vin, the gossip, a bowl of nocellara olives and some great baguette. Stay for a dinner that’s currently one of the best in London.” Read the full review.