Wow I didn’t even know there was a “cupcake fad.” Learn something new everyday
Oh! And I looked around on the menu for Phoebe’s I linked to upthread:
There’s a breakfast cupcake topped with BACON!
Ah. The Midwest.
I too didn’t know cupcakes were a fad. I’ve been eating Hostess cupcakes since I was a kid.
Yes. In my kitchen.
For anyone oblivious to the cupcake fad, I believe it was prompted, at least in part, by the appearance of Magnolia Bakery in an episode of Sex and the City. Not sure what it’s like these days – I find the product somewhat dry and totally overrated – but for a good 3-4 years it was packed with girls and women wearing oversized flowers pinned to their dresses.
Cupcake wedding cakes are the epitome of the cupcake fad. Maybe it’s not just trendy, it’s substantially cheaper. Which sort of confuses me, since it seems like it’d be more labor intensive than whole wedding cake.
I’d say this and the popularity of ‘Sprinkles’ cupcakes and how every show in the past couple years seems to mention it. At least shows that take place on the west coast.
We’ve got a gourmet cupcake shop in Hudson, Ohio (between Cleveland and Akron). I think it opened sometime last year. I requested (and got) a dozen for my 30th birthday this April. They were super yummy!
I offered to pick up cupcakes for a birthday/Mother’s Day party we had this May. I got to the cupcake store about 10 minutes before it opened in the morning and STOOD IN LINE to get my cupcakes 
For my sister-in-law’s baby shower we wanted cupcakes. So we called The Cake Lady who did this fantastic cupcake display with 40 cupcakes with French buttercream frosting, a raspberry center and a marshmellow fondant daisy on top of each one. And a 7" cake on top of the display.
People raved about the cupcakes, for sure.
I think the cupcake fad is alive and well in suburban NE Ohio.
The Yellow Leaf Cupcake Company opened on 4th in Belltown (Seattle) in June, I think. I’ve been to it once, to get a cupcake for my boss for her birthday. (It happened to be next door to the Thai place I was getting lunch from.)
BIG fad in Los Angeles starting about two or three years ago. Gourmet cupcake boutiques springing up like mushrooms. I can’t say if the trend has continued, as I no longer work in an office. (Co-workers and clients used to bring in fancy cupcakes on special occasions or as thank-yous.)
I was never that into cupcakes. For one, I like cake, but I’m not crazy about it or anything. For two, a cupcake is messy and inconvenient. It’s practically impossible to bite into one without making a big crumbly icing-all-over-your-face mess. And who wants to be seen eating one with a fork?
Those look almost exactly like what my western PA family calls “gobs”, but judging from that article, the recipe is completely different. Gobs are a very moist cake, not dry as the article describes, and filled with buttercream frosting, not Crisco or marshmallow.
Cupcake cakes are a regular feature on the Cake Wrecks blog. They almost never look good.
I encounter cupcakes at least once a week, but then I am raising a toddler. ColdStone recently came out with little ice cream cupcakes, which I love because it’s such a little portion, just enough to scratch the itch. And the “paper” cup is made of dark chocolate.
The bakeries at the local grocery stores all keep fresh cupcakes in stock, where you used to have to order them ahead of time.
Ditto on not liking the huge ones. The whole point of adults eating cupcakes is portion control. The huge ones are just an excuse to eat a much larger piece of cake than you would normally consider.
You can go ahead and pass one right over here.
I’ll have the vanilla with creme filling, chocolate frosting and sprinkles, please. Yum.
I usually bring homemade cupcakes to parties, etc. They’re always a huge hit.
Yep, as far as I am concerned the names are interchangeable even though the recipes vary. I lived in central PA and about half of the people I interacted with called them gobs, while the other half called them whoopie pies.
Hunting widows would bring plates of them into work around Thanksgiving time, all of them made with a buttercream frosting that had Crisco as an ingredient. They were moist-ish, but still dry and firm enough to hold together like a sandwich. To me they were like homemade Devil Dogs. Fabulous with a cup of coffee.
I think the fad is still alive in LA. A couple weeks ago I read in the LA Times food section about a woman who has a catering truck that sells nothing but cupcakes, like the Kogi Korean BBQ truck, but with different types of cupcakes. Not sure how well that will do, but she probably saw enough of a market for it that she considers it feasible.
This year my kid decided that she no longer likes birthday cake, so she requested cupcakes for her birthday party instead. I’ll probably have sis bake a couple dozen, decorate them myself, and arrange them on and around my mom’s decorative cupcake rack. Cupcakes have to be a hell of a lot easier to store and/or give away afterward than leftover birthday cake.
I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. You can’t swing a cat around here without hitting a cupcake bakery or two.
Chiming in from Pittsburgh. We just got our second frozen yogurt shop last week, and our third Dozen bakeshop, which chiefly sells cupcakes. I’ve always seen a line of at least a few people.
The prices are crazy ($2.50/apiece) but it’s nice as a gift - I purchased the doggie treats as part of a housewarming gift.
The actual cupcake is pretty good. But the icing is faaaaantastic.
They’re pretty faddish around here (Austin) with a few places that sell only cupcakes, for around $3 each.
However, I happen to know that the absolute best cupcakes come from the absolute best bakery, Lone Star Bakery (roundrockdonuts.com). The best icing in existence, and the cupcakes are only 50 cents each.
They were blowing up pretty big here before the economy fell apart. There was a Crumbs or Crumbs-type place in Scottsdale that just opened a couple years ago and I think it’s closed already. The Pinkberry clone by me is out of business already, too. Extrapolating from the date they opened and the date they closed, the guy never even made his first lease payment.
Me neither. But then, it does explain that Good Eats opening with Alton versus the snooty maitre’d at a posh cupcake cafe.