In the 2010s, the media generally had a snarky attitude towards cupcakes. Eyes were rolled and efforts were made to argue that ¿¡*#%^?!!!!! was the new cupcake.
Voices of reason were often based outside the coastal cities, such as this 2014 real talk from Tennessee.
Declaring that fill-in-your-favorite-food-trend-here is the new cupcake is the new cupcake of writing about food and trends. Reality time: Our grandmothers baked cupcakes. They’ve been served at children’s parties for decades. Cupcakes are less trend than they are one of the four major food groups. Get over yourselves, food-trend declarers.
Shelley Mays, The Tennessean
Now this attitude is even returning to the cosmopolitan hotspots. It was headline news in the Sunday magazine of The Newspaper of Record.
“My Friend and I Decided to Grab Some Cupcakes Before Going Home,” reads the January 2, 2022, New York Times headline. The popular Metropolitan Diary column begins with a first-person reader story of a night out that ends with a cupcakery run. Then the friends hail a taxi, in which they share their cupcakes with the driver to introduce the immigrant cabbie to a taste of Americana. Though it’s not explicit in the first-person story, the scene has Magnolia Bakery written all over it. When directly questioned in the comments, the writer confirms that’s the one. “I loved going there late at night. It seemed so exotic and was always packed. And of course the cupcakes were super yummy,” replies cupcake consumer Derek Layes.
Six months later, the magazine published a second story under the headline “These Cupcakes Are Pure Childhood Magic.”
The tone of this article is similar to that of author and pastry chef Christina Tosi, owner of Milk Bar Store. Her newest book is Dessert Can Save the World: Stories, Secrets, and Recipes for a Stubbornly Joyful Existence. Here Tosi evokes cupcakes in a tone that’s markedly different than the depiction in her previous book, All About Cake.
Since it’s a complete opt-in, dessert is rarely tainted by power struggles or other complicated food memories. Food can be weaponized, but I’ve never heard a story that goes, ‘Eat your ice cream or you’re not getting up from this table!’ … Is there a dessert that I hate? Not really. Sure, meh cupcakes make me sad. You have one of the most glorious combinations imaginable of cake and frosting and you blew it? That’s a bummer. But whatever, someone will eat it and be happy.
Christina Tosi, Dessert Can Save the World: Stories, Secrets, and Recipes for a Stubbornly Joyful Existence
The tone shift is evident in recent media reports.
The online news outlet Mashed opens a 2022 celebrity cupcake story by stating, “People just can’t seem to get enough cupcakes. Pint-sized versions of your favorite cake, they’re the equivalent of a personal pizza, but in dessert form. There are hundreds of mouthwatering cupcake flavors ….”
In an April story, a Northern California newspaper exclaims, “Cupcakes! New bakery, Doodlecakes, now open in Alameda.” The significance is that (1.) the newspaper deemed the opening of a bakery newsworthy and (2.) “Cupcakes!” headline the story.
This cookie roundup begins with a respectful validation of cupcakes: “While cupcakes are still very much alive and well these days, we’ve seen a recent boom in cookies ….”
Cupcakes are also used to represent everyday experiences. These two news stories invoke cupcakes to illustrate economic and public-health topics, symbolically weaving cupcakes into the social fabric.
This Bloomberg business story about teen summer jobs leads with a picture of workers frosting Magnolia Bakery cupcakes. The same bakery is pictured in a May 2022 New York Times story about masking guidance.
If these depictions herald a cultural shift, this remarkable news speaks to the economic moment.
When Crumbs declared bankruptcy in 2014, many reporters cynically trumpeted the end of cupcakes. The tone was borne of the same mindset that sought to designate blah-blah-blah as the next cupcake. Crumbs was the sacrificial lamb, the canary in the coal mine. And today it’s the phoenix rising from the ashes. This economic upturn sets a bullish tone for the coming years.
Back in the cultural milieu, here’s the NYT circulating the Magnolia cupcake recipe. The tone shift is amplified.
Andrea Adleman | Cupcakologist 