Why are people making ‘glickles,’ also known as glitter pickles?

Content creators are adding edible glitter to jars of dills in the pursuit of 'pretty pickles'

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Published Jan 07, 2025  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  2 minute read

Whatever you call them — "pretty pickles," "glickles" or glitter pickles — these dills are sweeping social media. Photo by @alessandrapizzz /TikTok

This year is poised to be the year of the pickle. According to the Pinterest Predicts 2025 report, searches for pickle margaritas are up 100 per cent. Fried pickle dip, pickle de gallo, pickle fries and pickle cake are also piquing people’s interest. But pickle-loving content creators are taking the tangy, shelf-stable food in an even more unlikely direction than pickle cupcakes — by adding glitter.

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Whether you call them “pretty pickles,” “glitter pickles” or “glickles,” these dills have swept social media over the past few weeks with tens of millions of views on TikTok. The concept is simple: Stir edible glitter into a jar of pickles for a snack swimming in a shimmering brine. Many of the videos run with @jam’s reverb-rich vocals, adding to the uncanny atmosphere: “Eww, pretty pickles. Pretty pickles, eww. Pretty pickles. Oh, my pretty pickles.”

Using edible, food-safe glitter is important. As Eater reported in 2018, non-toxic glitter can be made of plastic and shouldn’t be used on food. “This glitter is sometimes labelled as for ‘display’ only, with fine print explaining that it is not intended to be eaten and should be removed from foodstuffs prior to consumption — a challenging task when it’s being applied directly to icing or whipped cream.”

Edible glitter is most often used on cakes and in cocktails, and bakeries and bar supply shops are your best bet to source it. For example, Winnipeg’s Jenna Rae Cakes and Toronto’s Cocktail Emporium sell edible glitter online.

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Some of the “glickle” videos are subtle, with a sprinkle of glitter. Other creators spoon in so much glitter that the brine looks like iridescent sludge. Commenters make colour requests — asking for orange, blue and silver “pretty pickles” — but some are decidedly opposed, saying, “I’m hurt as a pickle lover” and “I’ll never understand this trend.”

Responses on the Pickle Addicts (Not So) Anonymous Facebook group were mixed, ranging from “Bedazzled pickles? Hell yea” to flat-out “No.”

Pickling is among the world’s most ancient food preservation techniques — after drying and curing. Mesopotamians began preserving cucumbers in acidic brine more than 4,000 years ago. So, how did we get here — to “pretty pickles”?

Sydney Stanback, senior manager of brand research at Pinterest, credits the rise of the pickle-everything trend to a penchant for “bold, tangy flavours” and Gen Z’s influence. People born between the late 1990s and early 2010s “love nostalgia” and modernizing elements from the past that resonate.

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“It’s like the avocado of their generation. (Millennials) are going for avocado toast. They’re going for pickles,” Stanback said in a December 2024 interview with National Post. “Certain staples have their peaks and valleys in terms of how relevant they are within menus or how people are rethinking them. We saw the mushrooms trend a few years ago — the home interior trend inspired by mushrooms — and now it’s pickles. So, it’s always interesting to see how these things evolve.”

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