In the article Ian Jack writes "the cupcake's triumph has to be accounted for in other ways. The first is its appearance. Few other foodstuffs, always excepting the Frenchified (and more expensive) fruit tart, have been confected to look so pretty (and with that word come others of the same kind – scrumptious, yummy). What it awakens is not so much childish tastes as childish imaginations – the perfect, comic-book cake. Then comes its commercial history. The cupcake – made in a cup or ramekin – made an appearance in a book of American recipes as long ago as 1828 and quickly became a staple of American home baking. In 1931, Irma S Rombauer accorded cupcakes an entire sub-section in her seminal The Joy of Cooking, but until 1996 they remained cakes that were made at home rather than bought in shops. In that year, the Magnolia Bakery in Greenwich Village opened and began to sell them as a homely comfort food, the kind mom used to make, rather as an expensive London restaurant might have sausage and mash on the menu. In America, they prompted a genuine nostalgia. A craze started and the media picked it up; an important moment came when Carrie Bradshaw ate a Magnolia cupcake in Sex and the City. And so the cupcake became at first chic and then wildly popular far beyond Manhattan. American cable channels now have two cupcake shows (Cupcake Wars and DC Cupcakes). At Rutgers University, Dr Kathe Newman is researching the proliferation of cupcake shops to demonstrate their usefulness as an accurate guide to urban gentrification and capital inflows into cities."
I just love it when cupcakes get media attention!
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