Several months ago, my sister's husband, Greg outlined his theory for me that cupcakes actually taste better than cake. When I expressed my confusion, he explained that the physical act of biting into a cupcake provides a taste experience that surpasses that which a piece of cake and a fork can offer. "Compare it to taking a hunk of fresh bread, tearing off a piece and starting to eat it," he elaborated, "would that bread taste as good if you took a fork to it?"
"Well... no!" I thought.
"It's the same idea with cupcakes," he finished.
And I realized I had no argument to make.
About a month after that, I took my relationship with cupcakes to the next level by responding to a request by several customers at Purls who wanted to learn to knit the cupcakes featured in Leigh Radford's popular knitting book, One Skein. So I baked a couple batches of some enticing cupcake recipes from Taste of Home Magazine's Spring 07 issue, packed up my knitting needles and my most "yummy" looking yarn, and obliged them. It proved to be the most fun (and tastey) knitting class I've ever taught!
(Edible mocha and berry-topped cupcakes on left... knitted ones on right!)
So yesterday after browsing around on MSN's cupcake links from their homepage, I realized that cupcake bakeries are cropping up all over the country! I even hear that there's a new one right here in Des Moines (which I plan to visit soon). I was also amazed to see how many cupcake blogs are out there in cyber space. Clearly they are taking our world by storm.
So what do you think? Are cupcakes the "new latte"? I'm a believer. And mark my words, before too long, there will be a cupcake bakery coming to your city too!
Some fun facts about *cupcakes:
- An alternate name for "cupcakes" is "fairy cakes".
- It is belived that cupcakes were created by taking a recipe for pound cake and rather than using a pound of each ingredient, a cup of each ingredient sufficed... thus pioneering the standard in baking of measuring ingredients by volume rather than weight. These little cakes were baked in small cups.
- Hostess first produced their classic cream-filled chocolate cupcake in 1919 using the slogan, "You get a big delight in every bite". The signature white "squiggle" wasn't added until 1950.
*Information obtained from http://www.hostesscakes.com/cupcakes.asp and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupcake .
8 comments:
Yum! I can't argue with the logic here :)
I am more impressed with the cupcakes that you knit. Those are so clever! However, when it comes to eating, I prefer the real thing. :o)
I love cupcakes simply because the frosting-to-cake ratio is much higher than for a piece of cake. And we have a new cupcake spot in downtown Ann Arbor, called Cake Nouveau, which I didn't think was worth the $3.50 for one cupcake, but my mom said the new Sprinkles in Dallas was yummy!
mmmm...now I want a cupcake. :)
That's pretty interesting, i didn't know cupcakes were so popular!
Oh, but what about that gorgeous layered cake. I don't think I can leave it behind. OK. I can do both!!
Okay, well, layer cakes can have a special place, because they do have more frosting than the average sheet chake and they look particularly cute in domed-cake stand...
Now that I have cupcakes on the brain, I'm going to make some. I had to let you know! Love you!
We certainly love our knitted cupcakes ala Aunt Erika! I'm not ready to say "the new latte" as if the latte is being replaced. How about The new perfect combo... Cupcake and Latte (Now that's a name for a cupcake bakery!)
Post a Comment