Don’t @ me: Cupcakes suck
Cake didn’t need to be reinvented
People half-ass all sorts of acceptable things: mid-term papers, washing crusty old spaghetti dishes, doing taxes, the list goes on. Choosing not to go all the way with dessert, however? A crime.
Cupcakes are a slacking, wasteful, dry, over-iced and undesirable attempt at emulating their superior role-model—cake.
Case and point: the best way to consume a cupcake is the sandwich method. This is achieved by cutting the cupcake in half horizontally and inverting the top so that the icing becomes a moistening layer in between the desiccated halves of over-baked batter. By employing this strategy, clever people manage to turn a deceptive, crummy experience into a slightly more pleasant one.
Hmmmm, icing in between layers of cake? Sounds an awful lot like... Cake. Why didn’t the baker simply put in a little more thought and decide to go big? Not only would this have saved their consumers’ mouths from an unpleasantly gritty baked good, but it would also save time, energy, and the environment.
Cupcakes are time-consuming and resource demanding. There is waste all along the line; from the paper linings, to the labour it takes to portion out the batter, to the hours involved in selling an entire dozen.
Seared into my food-waste conscious-mind is a memory of Girl Guide camp. On the last morning of a 3-day camp, the leaders declared a surprise. Giant plastic clamshell containers protecting 8-inch high cupcakes were whipped out. Seven of those inches were grocery-store grade, turd-like-swirled buttercream. Every kid contributed to gracing the garbage can with baby-blue or lavender icing and left camp in a daze of nausea that boded excellently on the bumpy, pot-holed gravol road back to civilization. I have never been able to repress this memory due to its sheer display of lavish guilt.
As a result of their inefficiency, cupcakes end up being vastly overpriced. Sure, some disillusioned benefactors of deep pockets find the painstakingly decorated towers pleasant and attractive. To the wealthy, falling for an individually topped pastel-pink vomit of sprinkles probably seems like a reasonable eye-porn investment. But if you ask me, depleting the planet’s resources isn’t very aesthetically pleasing or cute.
Cupcakes are a food for the rich, and personally, I think we should either eat the rich, or let them eat cake.
The cupcake is a miniature version of something great. Unfortunately, it’s format and nature will never allow it to achieve greatness. There was nothing wrong with cake, so why are we trying—as a society—to diminish it in pursuit of adorability.
Go have a thick, moist, fruit-filled, custard-layered slice of cake.
Tell me that you didn’t feel satiated and phenomenal. Tell me that you didn’t feel like you were contributing to the greater good. Tell me that you didn’t enjoy every second of it and lick the whipped cream off the ceramic, reusable plate it came on.
Commit to greatness; commit to cake.
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