Page 11 - Cupcakes

When I was growing up, I would frequently spend Friday nights with friends
or with my sisters in our mother’s kitchen (because she didn’t mind the mess),
baking cupcakes for fun. We licked the beaters, too, even though you weren’t
supposed to do that. And we baked cupcakes for others—for school bake sales
and teenage service projects. I remember cramming many chocolate cupcakes
into many cardboard shirt boxes lined with waxed paper.

These are just a few of my cupcake memories, and I am sure you have yours.
It’s no surprise that cupcakes appeal to all of us, no matter our age. This single
serving of cake has “mine” written all over it. It was not meant to be shared. And
we will never outgrow the ease and convenience of baking cupcakes, especially
when the batter begins with a cake mix and is simply doctored to make it
extraordinary.

Recently, cupcakes have developed even greater panache. Like home-baked
meat loaf and real mashed potatoes, they are terribly chic. Walk into an upscale
bakery in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles and you will see great gilded
cupcakes literally put up on pedestals (stainless steel cake stands lined with
paper doilies). They are often coated in fudge or caramel and might have a
candied violet or white chocolate shavings on top. And they might cost you $5 a