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The superiority comes from having the pay so much for so little. Prices on everything in Manhattan are atrocious! Sometimes those who live there equate price with quality - not always so.
I made a trillion cuppie cakes for all kinds of school parties when my daughter was growing up......I think that is where they should stay. I would never spend big bucks on such a silly novelty.....
My grandmother made everything from scratch, including red velvet......why it has made a comeback is beyond me.....definitely not high on my list...... However, carrot cake......a girl's gotta have her vegetables.....
The reason so many little cupcake shops sprang up is that you can bake and decorate a cupcake with an absolute minimum of skill required. There's a big baking forum where the bakers tell each other all day long that $3-$4 is an excellent price for a cupcake. You don't need a lot of special pans or a very big oven, or any advanced cake construction skills.
Personally, I can make 3 dozen bakery-style cupcakes with the big frosting swirl and hand-molded chocolate toppers in about two hours (including the time to make the toppers), for about $15 in ingredients, including the wrappers and box, and that's paying retail for my ingredients. So from a baker's point of view, the cupcake craze is easy to explain. Not so much from the consumer's, though...
from a taste point of view, i was watching one of those cupcake wars shows and they put all these goofy ingredients in the cupcakes. i wonder how they actually taste compared to the more traditional flavors. i think lots of times people put in these fancy ingredients to make the food sound more impressive but it doesnt taste any better than the normal stuff.
I totally missed the whole cupcake trend. I've never been a huge cake-lover though. I mean, it's okay, but buttermilk frosting is disgusting. Cream cheese frosting (like what you get on REAL carrot cake) is good in small doses. My grandmother's corn starch frosting is to die for - again, in small doses. But I'd rather have a square of devil's food cake with kahlua drizzled over the top. Or ice cream.
I really don't think it has anything to do with the fact that the cupcakes are good (I've had a few and they weren't that great), but that they're GORGEOUS. I think the bright colors and exotic flavors draw people in.
I totally missed the whole cupcake trend. I've never been a huge cake-lover though. I mean, it's okay, but buttermilk frosting is disgusting. Cream cheese frosting (like what you get on REAL carrot cake) is good in small doses. My grandmother's corn starch frosting is to die for - again, in small doses. But I'd rather have a square of devil's food cake with kahlua drizzled over the top. Or ice cream.
I've never patronized a cupcake shop or truck. The cupcakes that grandma, mom or i have made have been more than adequate. Grandma's were great! Mom's were a little... weird. I use the best ingredients that I can find to use with baking and cooking. Vanilla doesn't come from a bottle; chocolate doesn't come from a bag.
The first thing I do with one of these latter day cupcake creations is scrape 90% of the frosting off and bin it. I'm more a fan of my grandmother's thin, very tart, semi-clear lemon icing that she'd top my lemon birthday cakes with. I'm glad I had her teach me how to make it before she passed.
Cupcakes dry out pretty fast, not like cake where the frosting keeps it moist for a couple of days. So unless the cupcakes were made that day, they're usually a little unappealing.
Buttercream frosting doesn't have to be gross, it totally depends on the recipe. My recipe has emulsifiers in it so that it's not an oil slick in the mouth, and it gets crunchy edges after a little while. The cheap icing from the grocery store is pretty gross though...if you go to Sams they're selling big tubs of Butt-R-Creme icing, the same stuff Walmart puts on their cakes...I'm not eating anything named "butt" unless it's a pork roast.
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