There is truly nothing worse than your favorite product getting discontinued.
Favorite brand of dish soap. Favorite place for Mexican food. Favorite cocktail at a favorite bar. Normally, it can take years to find your true “favorite thing,” and it’s beyond disappointing to have those years go down the drain when a brand or company shuts down or discontinues your beloved product.
One woman is dealing with this exact phenomenon and has gone viral for telling her story. She’s also inspired a certain hero to rush to her aid.
A cry for help: H-E-B cake
It all started when a woman named Ashley (@thetalltok on TikTok) posted a video on Jan. 16, which now has over 235,000 views. In her video, Ashley sent out a plea to H-E-B workers regarding her husband’s favorite cake.
“OK, this video is for anyone that works at an H-E-B bakery,” Ashley begins in her TikTok. “There used to be a cake that was like a banana pudding cake, OK? It was amazing. It was like a custardy, delicious, I don’t even know how to explain it … It was my husband’s favorite cake.”
Ashley proceeds to impress upon her viewers just how much her husband loved that cake, saying he “would look for it and spend whatever amount of money he could on this cake.”
But now, Ashley has learned something devastating
“I went to H-E-B today to ask them if I could pre-order one for his birthday, which is in a couple weeks,” Ashley continues in the video. “H-E-B said they have discontinued it because of some ingredient that was needed to be in it, and the company does not make that ingredient anymore, so they can no longer make it.”
At this point, Ashley begs her TikTok audience to help her in some way find or replicate the beloved cake.
“This is my plea for anyone that knows how to make it or anyone that has a recipe for any kind of, like, banana pudding cake that’s, like, custardy and delicious,” Ashley says. “Please share, because I really want to get this for him for his birthday.”
To make things worse, Ashley reveals she’s even more in a bind because this cake is virtually the only thing she can get her husband for said birthday.
“I don’t know what else to get him,” she despairs. “He has everything he needs. I can get him more golf balls. He always needs those. But I really want to get him this cake. Please help me out. Somebody, somewhere, please.”
And wouldn’t you know it? Someone did indeed answer the call.
@thetalltok Please help me make my husband’s birthday special! #heb #hebbakery #birthday #bananapudding @H-E-B ♬ Banana Pancakes – Jack Johnson
Former H-E-B workers to the rescue
Ashley posted a follow-up video on TikTok a couple of weeks after her initial video went viral. Apparently, in the interim, not just one but multiple former H-E-B workers swooped in to save Ashley from her cake predicament.
“H-E-B never responded, but some wonderful people that have worked for H-E-B did,” Ashley reveals. “And they shared with me the recipe, at least as they know it.”
Ashley shares she does “not cook or bake,” as her husband is the resident cook and baker, but that she “really [wants to] do this for him.”
Ashley says she went to H-E-B, braving “H-E-B the day before a winter storm in Texas,” and got herself all the required ingredients, listing them off in the video.
“I am just trying to make it here, so wish me luck,” Ashley finishes. “If you don’t hear from me again,
I might have burned down my house.”
The Mary Sue has reached out to Ashley via TikTok comment and H-E-B via email to request additional comment.
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