Cupcake crash?

Years ago, cupcakes came in a box of six from the local supermarket. As a young child I can vividly recall the metallic silver cases (I’ll never forget the first time one came into contact with a filling!) and the thick milk “chocolate” that sat on top of the mass produced sponge.

The topping divided taste buds in our home. I preferred it to the cake itself and tended to devour it first. My brother, on the other hand, peeled it off, threw it at an expectant pet dog and just ate the sponge.

 

Anyway, that was my first cupcake experience, but in truth I don’t suppose they had much in common with authentic cupcakes at all and I forgot about this particular baked fancy for many years. I suppose the cupcake has really only appeared on the mainstream radar in the last five or so years (driven, inexorably by the supermarkets).

And now they’re everywhere. Aside from all the usual retail outlets selling an improved version of the cupcake I first ate all those years ago (but at 99p for four I do still wonder about quality), so many “homebakers” have set themselves up in business churning out cupcakes in a variety of different guises. Why, they’re even used as wedding cakes now…

My worry is that it’s the topping (frosting for our American friends) that’s come to be synonymous with the cupcake. You can have literally any colour in any flavour with a whole host of accoutrements from Maltesers to mango. The cupcake now seems to be an expression of art – as if each maker is trying to outdo the other in terms of its sugary appeal. For me that’s wrong. I like the cupcake to taste of cake. I don’t want the flavour of a beautifully baked sponge to be dominated by food additives.

 

In the beginning, cupcakes were sometimes called “number” cakes, because they were easy to remember by the measurements of ingredients it took to create them: One cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, four eggs, one cup of milk, and one spoonful of soda. They were as reliable and as loved as mom’s apple pie.

Don’t get me wrong. Visually, cupcakes are some of the most pleasing food items I get to shoot – and I’ve shot a lot of cupcakes over the past couple of years.

 

But I detect something of a backlash, simply because their very specialness has been eroded. I also reckon proper, homebaked cakes are in for something of a renaissance. In these difficult economic times, people want food that’s made with love and attention. Not mass-produced sugar blobs.

I’ve worked with a couple of ladies, Bonnie Shortie, that make cupcakes the old fashioned way – they get the cake right first and then worry about the topping. Their products are still flying off the shelf and I’m sure they’ll continue to do so. Good luck to them. But let’s see what the supermarkets try to mass reproduce next. They’ve already failed so miserably with cheesecake, millionaire’s shortbread, scones…the list goes on.

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