As 200-year-old American icons, cupcakes aren’t a trend. Though it’s oversimplistic to say there was a “cupcake trend” in the early 2000s, it’s true cupcakes were ascendant as a trending cultural product. Many of the standard-bearers are evolving and spotlighting other goods, yet cupcakes persist as the little engines that can.
Three historical milestones occurred in the year 2025.
In April, Sprinkles celebrated its 20th anniversary. The cupcakery was founded in Beverly Hills in 2005. It was the first high-profile bakery to sell only cupcakes. It refashioned cupcakes into a luxury product sold from an upscale boutique just off Rodeo Drive. This immediately caught the attention of celebrities, becoming catnip for the couple dubbed TomKat.
Katie Holmes liked Sprinkles and Tom Cruise liked Holmes. “Every time this Hollywood legend would send his new crush a box of Sprinkles Cupcakes, it became hot gossip magazine fodder, which was essentially a lot of free national press,” writes Sprinkles founder Candace Nelson in her book Sweet Success: A Simple Recipe to Turn your Passion into Profit. “I still don’t understand how I found myself swept up in the tornado that was TomKat fever, but the golden couple of the hour had become synonymous with Sprinkles Cupcakes, and we were off to the races. For months, TomKat couldn’t get enough of our product, and the media could not get enough TomKat, fighting over each other to grab both of their attention on the red carpet using Sprinkles Cupcakes as bait. Remember, this was the height of paparazzi chasing starlets like Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears all over Los Angeles. Paris Hilton celebrated her birthdays with Sprinkles. A photo of Jessica Alba walking out of Sprinkles with her bag of cupcakes was splashed across gossip rags.”
The cupcakes were served on Oprah in early 2006 and the rest is history. Sprinkles’ influence is all-encompassing. Today, it’s unremarkable to encounter a cupcakes-only bakery and to learn of its premium ingredients. Credit Sprinkles for mainstreaming these options, which were not the norm when Sprinkles opened.
Nelson, the founder, was a Cupcake Wars judge who has returned to TV in late 2025 on Next Level Baker. She summarized the company’s evolution in the 2024 post below, noting “200 million cupcakes sold / 20 stores / 30 ATMs / 1,000 employees.”
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July marked the 25th anniversary of modern cupcake celebrity. When Magnolia Bakery cupcakes appeared on the July 9, 2000, episode of Sex and the City, it sparked a craze that swept early-2000s pop culture.
Modern cupcakes are a New York story, arising from a specific time and place. The big bang originated at Magnolia Bakery in Greenwich Village, then reverberated far and wide.
In “25 Years of N.Y.C. Dining,” the New York Times highlights “major food moments … that changed life in New York City in the first quarter of the 21st century.” Magnolia cupcakes are the first entry in the timeline, published in the May 28, 2025, print edition. Of all the imagery that could have been chosen for the front-page teaser, it is Magnolia cupcakes that are pictured.
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Millions of consumers saw Magnolia cupcakes in the seminal 2005 video “Lazy Sunday,” starring Saturday Night Live comedians Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg. “Let’s hit up Magnolia and mack on some cupcakes,” the performers rap. “No doubt, that bakery’s got all the bomb frostings. I love those cupcakes like McAdams loves Gosling. Two, no, six, no, twelve—baker’s dozen! I told you that I’m crazy for these cupcakes, cousin.” The comedians display their cupcakes beneath the bakery’s blue awning before opening the box to start eating.
On Dec. 17, 2005, the video was posted to YouTube, which had launched just five months earlier. It became the first blockbuster video on the upstart website, introducing a wide swath of TV viewers to the concept of the online video-sharing platform. “Within days, ‘Lazy Sunday’ was the first TV show clip to have a viral second life online, with 2 million-plus viewings,” writes the Hollywood Reporter. “That week, YouTube’s traffic was up 83 percent.” Noting the billions of views that YouTube now attracts, the article asserts, “some credit for that success goes to Saturday Night Live and cupcakes.”
This NBC story includes the lyrics and discussion of the 2012 sequel video.
This year is also the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live. A commemorative broadcast in February included a tribute to cupcakes and the “Lazy Sunday” video. The retrospective medley opens with Andy Samberg and Lady Gaga. When the music changes and Chris Parnell appears on stage, Samberg and Parnell rap the first lines of “Lazy Sunday,” invoking Magnolia cupcakes. The camera then turns to dancers in cupcake costumes, among them former SNL writer Jorma Taccone.
Magnolia also makes an appearance in “17 SNL Writers Remember the First Sketch They Got on the Air.” Writer Jillian Bell tells Vanity Fair she was at Magnolia with cake in hand when head writer Seth Meyers called to offer her a job at SNL.
Andrea Adleman | Cupcakologist 