A really masculine snack
ManMADE: cupcake obsession
What really is the most manly of baked snacks?
I swear there is a gender divide at bakeries across the country and it seems there’s no room for compromise. If you’re buying in the cakes for an office party you risk coming under-fire for selecting the wrong desserts.
What’s the root of this problem? It seems every woman I know is obsessed with cupcakes. They’ve deified these simple sweet treats into an article of culinary perfection. I swear they spend hours day dreaming of the perfect ratio of sponge cake to cream icing and fantasise about the best way to work new root vegetables into their recipes -- I have not seen parsnip cake on sale yet but I swear it’s only a matter of time.
I have a theory that cupcakes are linked to girlish fantasies of weddings I, on the other hand, simply see them as a marginally entertaining distraction from my favourite sweet bakery product, the blueberry muffin. I have a theory that cupcakes are linked to girlish fantasies of weddings. Their elaborate decoration and crisp clean lines of icing are reminiscent of tiny little wedding cakes that hark back to childhood memories of Barbie, Ken and adulthood through the lens of Mattel - which was of course a lot simpler. For me, however, they’re just a reminder of the puny, sloppily-iced fairy cakes that my mother would make, only for them to turn into rock hard weapons of peer destruction within 24 hours.
So I find it difficult to understand why they have been fetishised the way they have, in what appears to have been a matter of weeks. Muffins are by contrast worth getting excited about, they’re not just a treat: they’re a meal, for many they’re breakfast. They are chunky masculine cakes full of body and berries. They might not be the most pretty but they are certainly the most rewarding of eats. To boot, they haven’t needed to be dressed up like cupcakes, they’re a good honest food which doesn’t need the cracks in its façade glazed over with cream cheese icing.
It’s not quite the next Israel v. Palestine. Wars are not started over tea parties but if they did I’m sure we could strike a peace agreement over the currant buns.
by Vern Pitt