Cupcakes have been around forever, but over the past few years, there has been an explosion in their popularity.
I understand brides are even offering cupcakes in place of the traditional wedding cake. Bakeries are popping up everywhere offering a plethora of flavors, with icing so tall they can’t fit into a bakery box.
We recently took a road trip to Tuscaloosa and Olivia Portera served us some wonderful cupcakes from Gigi’s. They were so fabulous, we had to stop by on the way home and pick
up some more. I couldn’t believe the cost – averaging $4-5 a piece and the lines were long. (You can buy a whole cake at Kroger for slightly more.)
The flavors were exhaustive but my favorite of course, was the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Marvelous.
Not to be outdone by Miss Gigi, I came home a baked up some of my own cupcakes, intending to pile on the icing up to eight inches.
Alas, I became distracted and burned them to a crisp. I iced them anyway and named them blackened cupcakes – it worked for Paul Prudhomme with his fish. My version was delicious if you just licked the icing off the top and discarded the cake – kind of like a pit.)
I’m still living with the aroma of essence of burned cupcake which has blended with the already strong essence of burned popcorn to produce an interesting new home fragrance.
Nevertheless, I maintain the popularity of cupcakes will wane like other hot food groups – bubble tea, steak tartar (raw meat) and cherries jubilee.
But I’ve been wrong before.