It's All About the Frosting

The cupcake craze hit New York years ago... and judging by the still-long lines at Magnolia Bakery, hasn't quite subsided yet.

The L.A. Times, meanwhile, says the trend has finally hit L.A..

This week's LAT food section hit the Alcove in Los Feliz ("a chocolate chip cupcake the size of a softball"); Auntie Em's Kitchen in Eagle Rock; Leda's Bake Shop in Sherman Oaks ("carrot mini-cupcake with blood-orange curd and mascarpone frosting"); Clementine Cafe in Century City; Beechwood Restaurant in Venice; and Toast in L.A.

And then there's Sprinkles ("dark chocolate cupcake made rich with Callebaut chocolate and real chocolate sprinkles"), a new "cupcake boutique" in Beverly Hills, which reportedly sells about 1,000 cupcakes a day.

Writes the paper:

There are blogs devoted to cupcakes, and cupcake entries in general blogs. There are tiered stands, ruffled silicone baking cups made just for cupcakes and even a cupcake transportation module — a plastic container that lets you tote a single cupcake from home to office to beach to Mt. Everest without the frosting getting mussed, even if the cupcake gets turned upside down.

Who knew that the cupcake-itis that struck New York a couple of years ago was so infectious?

Publishers are doing what they can to spread it. On newsstands, cupcake glamour shots populate the pages of magazines. And four cookbooks devoted to cupcakes have come out in the last few months.

...
When it comes down to it, it's a cupcake. It's just a little cake batter baked in a paper cup and slathered with frosting.

No big deal. And yet, it is.

Talk to cupcake die-hards and they'll wax poetic about the cupcake's high frosting-to-cake ratio, its portability, its cachet as a single-serving indulgence.

And with pastry chefs making them over inside and out with designer ingredients and cool designs, that's icing on the cupcake.