The most popular baked goods flavours for 2017

Melville, NY – Comax Flavors has released new market research on American consumers’ behaviour towards baked goods. The study focused on cakes, cookies, donuts, muffins and pies.

The Sweet Baked Goods study was fielded in August 2017 with 1,000 U.S. respondents between the ages of 18 to over 70; half were female and the other half were male.According to IRI, the pastry/danish/coffee cakes segment grew by 3.5 per cent to $2.0 billion, doughnuts were up 2.7 per cent to $2.0 billion and muffin sales were up 8.3 per cent to $976.6 million in the United States for the 52 weeks ending March 19, 2017.

“Although there has been a lot of activity in better-for-you products, consumers still have a sweet tooth and crave a variety of baked goods,” stated Catherine Armstrong, VP of Corporate Communications for Comax Flavors in a press release. “We wanted to better understand what’s happening in baked goods among the general population.”

The most popular flavours are, in order of popularity:

1. Chocolate
2. Chocolate-chip
3. Red Velvet
4. Berry and coconut flavours
5. Apple

When it comes to cookies, 74 per cent of all respondents preferred a soft or chewy cookie. Half or more of all respondents like a filled, sandwich style cookie. 68 per cent of the study selected the chocolate chip cookie as their favourite.  In second and third place were oatmeal and peanut butter cookies respectively, while Generation Z prefers candies in their batter, such as M&M’s.

More than half of the study responded that they preferred glazed donuts, and powdered sugar coming in second to topping favourites.  Chocolate and chocolate-frosted were the most popular choices in the glazed category. 26 per cent of the respondents consume jelly filled donuts, particularly among those who are over the age of 70.

According to the study, the most popular muffin flavour is blueberry across all age ranges, with chocolate chip coming in second. Banana muffins came in third, with chocolate muffins and coffee crumb muffins nearly tied for fourth place in flavour popularity.

The Sweet Baked Goods study cited apple pie as the “number one universally consumed flavour by all generations,” with 68 per cent citing it as their favourite. The second most loved pie is Cherry.

Among pastry lovers, the cheese danish was the most popular, and the pecan danish the least favourite. Among cupcake fans, only three-quarters consume chocolate and half consume cream-filled cupcakes. Less than half (46 per cent) of the respondents eat Red Velvet.

To request a copy of the complete Sweet Expectations infographic, contact carmstrong@comaxflavors.com or get more information from www.ComaxFlavors.com