From Rachel - This cupcake interview with Tamara is a little heavier than we usually get into on this blog, but I think will also be of interest to our readers. She calls cupcakes "the hand-written thank-you notes of baking" - LOVE IT! She also calls them "art that you eat" - indeed.
Name: Tamara S. Tabo
Age: 27
Location: Stanford, California
Occupation: Philosophy Graduate Student; Law School Applicant; Ferocious, Unabashed Bitch in the Name of Eating Disorder Awareness
URL: www.digestiondujour.blogspot.com
How often do you eat cupcakes?
That's a tricky question because I am presently dragging myself out of the trenches of Anorexia. (Read about my recovery experiences at www.digestiondujour.blogspot.com) Prior to the onset of my eating disorder, I'd estimate a cupcake consumption frequency of once or twice a month. I'll let you guess how often I ate the likes of cupcakes during the height of my illness, when a bowl of steamed vegetables felt like an indulgence. As I get angry at Anorexia (and the culture that perpetuates it) and get happy about food again, I expect my cupcake intake to increase accordingly.
What's the best thing about eating cupcakes?
Approached right, they can be miniature works of art. Art that you eat! What a total aesthetic experience! While dainty and sweet, they are also the rugged individualists of the pastry world. (I think I want to be a cupcake when I grow up.) Even the ugliest cupcake ever slapped together by a kid for a kindergarten birthday party is way cuter than any cookie or pie I've ever seen.
Always seeking out salient metaphor in all things, I suppose that, most importantly, I see cupcakes as symbolic of righteous eating. As a woman recovering from an eating disorder, the part of me that binges and purges wants to eat a whole damned cake, right now, all at once . . . then throw it up. The part of me that restricts food intake to the slightest minimum physically possible doesn't even want to taste the homemade frosting to see if it came out right. The intuitive, limits-loving-yet-life-embracing eater in me wants a cupcake.
We all deserve to have our lives punctuated by itty-bitty bits of sweetness. We're entitled to tiny oases of something worth savoring, even as we live comfortably with the reality that life is not meant to always be sweet. Cupcakes are the blissful middle ground between gluttony and asceticism, between pathological over-indulgence and rigid, unkind self-denial. We all deserve a cupcake now and then.
What's your favorite type of cupcake?
The immediately available type! I am, indeed, a cupcake pluralist. However, the Guinness chocolate variety profiled on your website may change that . . . .
How do cupcakes compare/contrast to other baked goods for you?
The careful crafting of cupcakes versus that of other baked goods appeals to me. There's some sort of extra mindfulness necessary to assemble discrete, unique cakes. Preparing a batch of cupcakes is like the hand-written thank-you notes of baking, whereas a whole cake is more like sending out a mass e-mail thanking "everyone who made my birthday so special." Both are nice, of course, but the former just seems a little more personal.
And cookies? Well, cookies, the little nondescript, conformist bastards, seem to me to be the Stalinists of baked goods. I have no time for cookies.
Is there any innovation you'd like to see made to the cupcake that would improve it for you?
You suggest some imperfection in the Almighty Cupcake? Sacrilege! I'll play it safe and say that wider distribution would be an improvement.
Do you bake your own cupcakes? Or (even better) have someone who bakes them for you?
This past summer, I baked several batches of cupcakes for friends and family. On my mom's birthday I tried a pecan praline ice cream cupcake recipe, along with a handful of other spontaneous concoctions. I even made my own frosting. This short-lived blaze of glory in the kitchen was totally out-of-character for me--not only because, well, I was anorexic, but also because my cooking skills (and ambitions) had never really surpassed the level of those of a sixth-grade latchkey kid. To
be honest, my baking whirlwind felt a bit more like a craft project than food preparation. (Hmmm . . . maybe that had a little something to do with the fact that I didn't want to personally eat any of the cakes . . . .) In any case, it was a fun experiment, one that I look forward to replicating now that I'm cultivating a healthy romance with food.
What's your first cupcake-related memory?
I recall a preschool-era birthday party with yellow cakes with chocolate frosting. I was always an eat-by-the-layer sort of girl, so I meticulously separated the cakey contents of the paper cup from the chocolate on top, dabbing at the frosting with my finger.
I also remember, pretty early on, fetishizing those mass-produced supermarket monstrosities--you know, the ones with the grandiose swirl of whipped cream frosting that was often, I don't know, airbrushed with bright colors, as though some underemployed graffiti artist was making rent by working in the bakery department of the grocery store. In my childhood, such baked goods were verboten. They were like the Barbie dolls of cupcakes--which my organic-vegetables-and-homesewn-clothes sort of mom would not abide either. That which is forbidden becomes that which we want. Thus, my burning girlhood longing for pink, plastic-y things, both dolls and cakes.
What's the most fun you've ever had with a cupcake?
A high-school era food fight at a pool party comes to mind . . . but that starts to sound like the premise of a lame erotic story.
Name: Tamara S. Tabo
Age: 27
Location: Stanford, California
Occupation: Philosophy Graduate Student; Law School Applicant; Ferocious, Unabashed Bitch in the Name of Eating Disorder Awareness
URL: www.digestiondujour.blogspot.com
How often do you eat cupcakes?
That's a tricky question because I am presently dragging myself out of the trenches of Anorexia. (Read about my recovery experiences at www.digestiondujour.blogspot.com) Prior to the onset of my eating disorder, I'd estimate a cupcake consumption frequency of once or twice a month. I'll let you guess how often I ate the likes of cupcakes during the height of my illness, when a bowl of steamed vegetables felt like an indulgence. As I get angry at Anorexia (and the culture that perpetuates it) and get happy about food again, I expect my cupcake intake to increase accordingly.
What's the best thing about eating cupcakes?
Approached right, they can be miniature works of art. Art that you eat! What a total aesthetic experience! While dainty and sweet, they are also the rugged individualists of the pastry world. (I think I want to be a cupcake when I grow up.) Even the ugliest cupcake ever slapped together by a kid for a kindergarten birthday party is way cuter than any cookie or pie I've ever seen.
Always seeking out salient metaphor in all things, I suppose that, most importantly, I see cupcakes as symbolic of righteous eating. As a woman recovering from an eating disorder, the part of me that binges and purges wants to eat a whole damned cake, right now, all at once . . . then throw it up. The part of me that restricts food intake to the slightest minimum physically possible doesn't even want to taste the homemade frosting to see if it came out right. The intuitive, limits-loving-yet-life-embracing eater in me wants a cupcake.
We all deserve to have our lives punctuated by itty-bitty bits of sweetness. We're entitled to tiny oases of something worth savoring, even as we live comfortably with the reality that life is not meant to always be sweet. Cupcakes are the blissful middle ground between gluttony and asceticism, between pathological over-indulgence and rigid, unkind self-denial. We all deserve a cupcake now and then.
What's your favorite type of cupcake?
The immediately available type! I am, indeed, a cupcake pluralist. However, the Guinness chocolate variety profiled on your website may change that . . . .
How do cupcakes compare/contrast to other baked goods for you?
The careful crafting of cupcakes versus that of other baked goods appeals to me. There's some sort of extra mindfulness necessary to assemble discrete, unique cakes. Preparing a batch of cupcakes is like the hand-written thank-you notes of baking, whereas a whole cake is more like sending out a mass e-mail thanking "everyone who made my birthday so special." Both are nice, of course, but the former just seems a little more personal.
And cookies? Well, cookies, the little nondescript, conformist bastards, seem to me to be the Stalinists of baked goods. I have no time for cookies.
Is there any innovation you'd like to see made to the cupcake that would improve it for you?
You suggest some imperfection in the Almighty Cupcake? Sacrilege! I'll play it safe and say that wider distribution would be an improvement.
Do you bake your own cupcakes? Or (even better) have someone who bakes them for you?
This past summer, I baked several batches of cupcakes for friends and family. On my mom's birthday I tried a pecan praline ice cream cupcake recipe, along with a handful of other spontaneous concoctions. I even made my own frosting. This short-lived blaze of glory in the kitchen was totally out-of-character for me--not only because, well, I was anorexic, but also because my cooking skills (and ambitions) had never really surpassed the level of those of a sixth-grade latchkey kid. To
be honest, my baking whirlwind felt a bit more like a craft project than food preparation. (Hmmm . . . maybe that had a little something to do with the fact that I didn't want to personally eat any of the cakes . . . .) In any case, it was a fun experiment, one that I look forward to replicating now that I'm cultivating a healthy romance with food.
What's your first cupcake-related memory?
I recall a preschool-era birthday party with yellow cakes with chocolate frosting. I was always an eat-by-the-layer sort of girl, so I meticulously separated the cakey contents of the paper cup from the chocolate on top, dabbing at the frosting with my finger.
I also remember, pretty early on, fetishizing those mass-produced supermarket monstrosities--you know, the ones with the grandiose swirl of whipped cream frosting that was often, I don't know, airbrushed with bright colors, as though some underemployed graffiti artist was making rent by working in the bakery department of the grocery store. In my childhood, such baked goods were verboten. They were like the Barbie dolls of cupcakes--which my organic-vegetables-and-homesewn-clothes sort of mom would not abide either. That which is forbidden becomes that which we want. Thus, my burning girlhood longing for pink, plastic-y things, both dolls and cakes.
What's the most fun you've ever had with a cupcake?
A high-school era food fight at a pool party comes to mind . . . but that starts to sound like the premise of a lame erotic story.
Comments
the gal from Elcam
I am looking for something I think would be so easy to find. Bright Pink cupcake wrappers or cups (what ever you want to call them)
Any suggestions were to find them?