Take a few days away from nonstop blogging and what happens? Ha!
And all you publishers clamoring for cupcake books? We're writing a book proposal as I type! (Okay, not literally, but yes, Cupcakes Take the Cake wants to write a book. And we will, mark my words.)
I saw the big Publishers Weekly article on cupcakes last night (so more on that from us later) but have been trying to have, um, a vacation in Austin, albeit a cupcake-filled one, so didn't get to blog about it. Now women's blog Jezebel responds, saying:
So...what gives? Yes, they were on Sex and the City. Yes, they're cute, nostalgic, portable, easy-to-make, and versatile. But so are a lot of things. What is striking about cupcakes is they're traditional domesticity repackaged as sophisticated femininity: once the purview of the stay-at-home mom, now they're an emblem of the SATC city girl, on-the-go, busy, restrained but invested in treating herself because she's "worth it." The primacy of the cupcake seems not incidentally to corollate with our notion of food as inherently moralistic: the cupcake is not "wicked," it's not "sinful," it's not death by anything. It's cute! One could doubtless argue that there's an element of arrested development to the craze; now, every day can be someone's birthday, with their moms bringing a batch of synthetically-frosted Duncan Hines to the classroom and briefly covering the birthday child with glory. So, if then the cupcake is a deliberate abdication from the moral choices inherent to adulthood, what does it say that their popularity is only increasing as the world further burdens us with inescapable and harsh realities?
Maybe just that some people really like a high ratio of icing to cake. And that it's nice to let people choose between chocolate and vanilla.
And all you publishers clamoring for cupcake books? We're writing a book proposal as I type! (Okay, not literally, but yes, Cupcakes Take the Cake wants to write a book. And we will, mark my words.)
I saw the big Publishers Weekly article on cupcakes last night (so more on that from us later) but have been trying to have, um, a vacation in Austin, albeit a cupcake-filled one, so didn't get to blog about it. Now women's blog Jezebel responds, saying:
So...what gives? Yes, they were on Sex and the City. Yes, they're cute, nostalgic, portable, easy-to-make, and versatile. But so are a lot of things. What is striking about cupcakes is they're traditional domesticity repackaged as sophisticated femininity: once the purview of the stay-at-home mom, now they're an emblem of the SATC city girl, on-the-go, busy, restrained but invested in treating herself because she's "worth it." The primacy of the cupcake seems not incidentally to corollate with our notion of food as inherently moralistic: the cupcake is not "wicked," it's not "sinful," it's not death by anything. It's cute! One could doubtless argue that there's an element of arrested development to the craze; now, every day can be someone's birthday, with their moms bringing a batch of synthetically-frosted Duncan Hines to the classroom and briefly covering the birthday child with glory. So, if then the cupcake is a deliberate abdication from the moral choices inherent to adulthood, what does it say that their popularity is only increasing as the world further burdens us with inescapable and harsh realities?
Maybe just that some people really like a high ratio of icing to cake. And that it's nice to let people choose between chocolate and vanilla.
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