GIVE ME ALL THE ‘BRAT’-THEMED FOOD THIS SUMMER

I’m not really the type of person who has a “summer album.” Yet, the dance beats and introspective lyrics of Charli XCX’s album Brat has a throat hold on me since it dropped in early June, and I’ve been obsessed with the discourse. The questions around motherhood that “I Think About It All the Time” wonders about. The complexity of insecurity and female friendships between two mega pop stars — here, Charli and Lorde — who then collab on a remix about those difficult feelings in “Girl, So Confusing.” The dangerous nature of jealousy and self-loathing in “Sympathy Is a Knife.” As playwright and actor Jeremy O. Harris put it in a recent The Cut interview: “Right now, the only music I’m listening to is Brat on repeat. Loud. It’s Brat season; I’m a one-man streaming farm.”

I feel similarly. What can I say: I like dark themes against a dance beat.

When I was chatting with a food friend the other week, what I was more concerned about was what she thought the drink of the summer is — I was thinking along the lines of a Pornstar Martini or something similarly passionfruit-involved or with a POG (pineapple, orange, guava) base. But instead, she had a confession. “I just want a Brat-green cocktail,” she says. “Where are those drinks?”

The Brat album cover has inspired its own discourse for its minimalist, low-res quality and loud green color, and Charli XCX discussed why she went that route in a recent Vogue Singapore interview: “I wanted to go with an offensive, off-trend shade of green to trigger the idea of something being wrong. I’d like for us to question our expectations of pop culture — why are some things considered good and acceptable, and some things deemed bad? I’m interested in the narratives behind that and I want to provoke people. I’m not doing things to be nice.”

I have yet to encounter any lime green cocktails, but the idea of Brat drinks and foods seems silly, yet fun; a knowing wink, in a way. Maybe this is something we (I?) could use some of this summer. But Brat fever has reached other areas of food. There was a Brat hot dog — or, more succinctly, a bratwurst with a Brat-branded bun — but now I’m seeing it more commonly as cake. Oakland graphic designer and cake hobbyist Jessica Duong posted Instagram photos under her handle @jd_bakes_4u, sharing a recent client request for a birthday cake in the theme of Brat. “The album just came out a few weeks ago,” Duong says, “and people are eating it up. Maybe they want to literally eat it up — they want to be Brat-coded.”

Duong says this cake request was irresistible as both a graphic designer and cake maker, but also as someone who’s been listening to the album nonstop. Holding a Pantone swatch in one hand against the frosting, to find that perfect color — in this case Pantone 375 C, just one number off from the Charli XCX song, “365,” Duong notes — she’s using her design and baking skills to pull it off. Duong made a three-layer vanilla almond cake, with macerated strawberries, strawberry buttercream, and passionfruit jam, with vanilla buttercream on the exterior in that signature green. This is Brat made edible. “I usually do very intricate cakes,” Duong says. “So this is just so simple, but so impactful that people know immediately what it is.”

Since Duong’s posted photos of the Brat cake, she’s gotten requests for more — and she’s embracing it. “Yes, it’s Brat Summer,” Duong says. “If it has to be any type of summer, it’s going to be Brat summer.”

If you’re similarly Brat obsessed and know of any Charli XCX-themed drinks and snacks, let me know. I’m here for it: [email protected]

2024-06-28T19:14:54Z dg43tfdfdgfd