I’ve never understood the whole cupcake craze. Overpriced, prone to dryness, and small to boot–what’s the point? I expected them to soon disappear from bakery shelves and cafes. Nevertheless, they persist.
So in the spirit of if you can’t lick them, join them, I’m now doing both. In fact, much to my surprise, I find myself diving head first into all things cupcake.
That’s because my daughter and her fiancé have commissioned me to supply cupcakes for their wedding next July. I’m known for the deliciousness of my baking, but presentation is not my strong suit. Charmingly homespun is a generous description. Hence, research and trial runs have begun early.
My friend’s husband, in tackling some major home renovations despite his inexperience, once remarked, “You can do anything with YouTube and poor impulse control.” The same is true for cupcakes. I have watched endless YouTube videos about the perfect buttercream, the best decorating tips, how to get a domed cupcake, how to use a coupler. In my case, the poor impulse control usually expresses itself on my hips, after eating the experiments. This is probably safer than accidentally knocking down a load-bearing wall.
The best part, though, is how the rabbit hole of cupcake tutorials transports me to a different world when our current world is so dispiriting. All the videos feature cheerful people in sparkling kitchens, testifying what a cinch it is to churn out beautiful rainbow-swirled cupcakes. They seem completely and happily removed from reality, which is quite compelling in a world of so much ugliness and hardship..
Delta variant (and now, OMG–omicron!) got you down? No sweat, just keep those pastry bags equipped with star tips coming! Messy withdrawal from Afghanistan? Nothing restores a sense of calm order like clear glass bowls of pastel frosting lined up on the counter.
Cupcakes as antidote to despair. Maybe that’s why the craze has lasted so long.
My preliminary research soon led to the first human trials, aka taste tests. I prepared two kinds of lemon cupcakes, carrot with and without nuts, almond poppy seed, and black bottom cupcakes.
My kitchen and my cupcakes did not look like the ones on YouTube. In fact, my runny buttercream looked like it had been applied by slap-dash, drunken kindergarteners.
It was all delicious, though. Black bottom and nut-less carrot cupcakes were the hands-down favorite for the final cut. My second attempt yielded buttercream actually stiff enough to hold its shape. Besides, the happy couple is fine with charmingly homespun.
So successful were the cupcake trials that I was soon commissioned to make a small wedding cake. My only prior experience was 40 years ago, when my trial wedding cake for a friend luckily happened early enough that there was plenty of time to throw it in the trash and order a real cake from a bakery. I guess that will be our fallback position this time, too.
High stakes, high anxiety–a perfect project to distract me from my 2022 mid-term anxiety!
My first attempt debuted this Thanksgiving. Not exactly ready for prime time, but not bad, either:
And totally delicious!