"We're Off Cupcakes and Back to Doughnuts"*

I'm sweaty, my kitchen is a mess and everything is stained red. No I didn't kill anyone, although I'm sure that was your first thought, but I had to whip up a batch of red velvet cupcakes. I'm officially a "Mom" now since I recently purchased one of those snazzy, Tupperware, double-decker, cupcake caddies that safely totes twenty-four little cakes, rather than what I had been using - ratty gift boxes reinforced with packing tape. But even with this new purchase, I AM SO OVER CUPCAKES.

Cupcakes have been a fad for quite a while now, starting with the now-famed Magnolia Bakery in Manhattan in the 90's, then Sprinkles in Los Angeles circa 2003, with the idea spreading over the past ten years like a sugary Ebola virus, until every town, city and hamlet had its own cupcake shop. Some of these places are great. Magnolia, in NYC, has wonderful cupcakes, which can be purchased from the sullen staff, bloated with their own hubris at having landed a minimum wage job that entitles them to yell at tourists who just want to eat a cupcake on the non-existent bench out front and talk about Aidan ala Carrie and Miranda. But many of the shops you are lured into these days, with their adorable displays and pun-based names, like Babycakes, serve what can best be described as lumps of sickly sweet dough, topped with equally nauseatingly sweet lard. Crumbs, a chain trying to be the Starbucks of cupcakes, with their marble-topped tables and black and white photos, is a prime example. Although their classics are good (I even sent KK a giant red velvet one for her birthday), in an effort to outdo the everyday cupcake, they have come up with such tooth-rotting combinations as the BaBa Booey** - chocolate cake filled with peanut butter frosting, topped with peanut butter and chocolate cream cheese frosting and rimmed with peanut butter chips. You all know I love sweets, but this is even too much for me. Sure, they're assholes at Magnolia, and you're forced to eat their goods sitting on the Bleecker Street curb, while some fashionista on the way to Cynthia Rowley lets her Maltese takes a piss on you, but at least you can taste more than sugar.

It seems everyone is ready to ride this frosting wave until the bitter end. Can't figure out what to do with your life, but have decent credit? Take out a loan and open a cupcake shop!!! Stay-at-home moms, empty-nesters, former tattoo artists, name your niche and there's a shop for you. It seems if you can operate an Easy Bake oven you qualify. And speaking of former tattoo artists as bakers, when did cooking school become the new tech school? Have you watched any reality cooking shows recently? I don't know about you, but these were the same guys hanging out at the smoking wall at my high school and now their making French meringue? Odd.

The chefs' attire and body piercings aside, I think cupcakes are just inherently wrong. They are cake's lazy, ne'er do well younger sister - trying to achieve all the results with half of the work and failing miserably. Real cake has layers of cake and frosting, so that each bite can have some of each. Try to get a bit of each while eating a cupcake, and you wide up covered in crumbs and butter cream after it collapses when you have to unwrap it in order to gnaw at it from the sides and bottom. Watching my kid eat a cupcake makes me want puke. Little Man takes the entire glob of icing off in one giant mouthful, forcing me to imagine his little arteries hardening at the sheer volume of saturated fat entering his system at once.

As a mother, I can not cut cupcakes completely out of my life. They are, after all, the end-all-be-all of elementary school class parties*** - quite handy not requiring utensils or plates, and children do love them (even though their mothers avert their eyes in horror when they are consumed). I need not be worried though, as apparently, cupcakes' time in the sun is almost over and they are about to be eclipsed by French macarons, which are beautiful to look at, come in interesting flavors, and are less likely to be nicknamed after a giant-toothed, big-lipped radio sidekick. Not sure if I'll be eating many of them though, since I don't have access to a high-end bakery these days and they haven't made it to the 'burbs. Also, they're French, and French women annoy me. I'd be effortlessly thin too if I had government-funded babysitting. When your kids are around all the time, so are their cupcakes.


*One of the best 30 Rock quotes ever. Play the bottom one.
**Sure, some of the proceeds of this cupcake go to charity, but a tie-in with Howard Stern's (who I surprisingly kind of like) crony might not be the best marketing tool.
*** I love that my kids' school is so old fashioned we can still bring in cupcakes. Because there is no more half-assed way to celebrate a six year-old's big day than individual packs of mini-muffins.