Utter piffle from the Telegraph (nothing new there!)
Every so often, as the privileged occupier of a newspaper column, it falls to me to sound a warning note on a matter of the utmost national importance, and now we face a threat that must be tackled if in future we are all to sleep easier in our beds. I refer, of course, to the invasion of the American cupcake.
The cupcake, a mound of greasy sponge sagging under a grossly overweight hat of buttercream frosting, is an abomination. I fell for it once, or at least I was briefly seduced by the idea of it. I had watched the girls on Sex and the City tucking into cupcakes at New York's Magnolia bakery, and when I was in New York with my husband some years ago we went straight there and ordered the specialty. But even I couldn't manage to make it through the topping: it was so glutinously thick and sweet it made my teeth ache.
Now those very cupcakes are proliferating in fashionable bakeries right across Britain, sweating and stiffening in numerous shop windows. I wouldn't object, particularly, except that they appear to be driving out our own British native, the fairy cake, a thing of delicate glory. Where a third of the cupcake's body weight is composed of bulky frosting, the smaller fairy cake boasts only a thin, hard layer of icing atop its sponge: when married to a large cup of hot tea, it is as near to perfection as a small cake can come.
The cupcake is the culinary equivalent of the chunky, aggressive grey squirrel, pushing out its frailer rival: if we don't act now, fairy cakes will soon only be found in obscure, out-of-the-way tea-shops in the Outer Hebrides or the Isle of Wight. The cupcake is over-iced, overpriced and over here. It must be stopped.
again I say PIFFLE! As for greasy sponge??? I don't recall ever having a proper cupcake that tasted greasy - only the horrid "healthy" ones from Whole Foods which were full of oil. You can get fairy cakes in every supermarket in the UK - mass produced, full of additives to keep them in date for a month and tasting of nothing but sugar and more sugar in the royal icing. Cupcakes however are full of fresh ingredients, no additives and taste better...end of!
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