Food Trend Watcher Kara Nielsen On Cupcakes

We have been blogging about cupcakes for nearly seven years and almost from the start people have gleefully volunteered their disdain for cupcakes. There's some cupcake haterade out there, so it is nice to see some appreciation for the cupcake from an expert. Kara Nielsen, trendologist at Center For Culinary Development, gives her take on cupcakes. 

How do trends usually play out after the end-of-year lists fade from memory? Look at cupcakes: It’s a trend, but where, and for whom? They started in the late 1990s with Magnolia Bakery, but moms never stopped making cupcakes, and cupcake liners were never not in the grocery store. I even think of the cupcake trend as not the cupcake trend but the specialty bakery trend. If you follow them up the trend map, basically they’re not new anymore, and they ceased to be a trend in the sense of moving—they have arrived, part of our pantry or vernacular. On the other hand, there are fads like low carb, where the industry made low-carb foods that weren’t satisfying and didn't sell and were too expensive and disappeared. Things that disappear too quickly go down in the record book as fads.

On the topic of cupcakes, will they ever go away? And what’s your answer to the eternal question of what will be the next cupcake? I do think people will tire of them a bit, but nothing is sitting on the top of my head right now as the thing that’s going to take over for the cupcake. I will say, I'm getting tired of talking about these Americana desserts with marshmallows and peanut butter. The real key is trying to understand what’s driving a trend, which we don’t hear as much about as "This is a trend." Food trends typically need to meet a consumer need in some way for them to become in demand. It’s a really basic thought, but when you look at an item and think, "What need is this filling?"—that’s when it gets interesting.