Not More Cupcakes Baking Cupcakes Again
Today's front page has a photo of two cute women and their cupcakes, teasing a main piece in Food about Georgetownn Cupcakes. People are lining up, of course, because cupcakes are just so fucking exciting.
Except they're not. Anyone can make cupcakes, people, with the exception of Warren Brown. His CakeLove cakes are the worst ever, although I adore when he tries to defend that popular opinion, as he did in an Ask Tom chat in 2005:
I have seen on-line @ Ask Tom several comments that state CakeLove tastes like lard or is dry and is hard. To me, this suggests that people are eating the cakes, cupcakes, and other pastries at temperatures other than room temperature. We've seen similar comments in the past from customers who were eating the product straight from the fridge.
Supposedly, the reason his cakes are bland when cold is because of all the "fresh ingredients" he uses. Or they're just bland and cold. My ingredients at home may be a few more days away from the farm than ol' Warren's, and damn if they don't taste like cupcakes, rather than "like lard."
Truly, it takes no special skill to throw some batter in a tin and slap on some frosting, but every time one of these cupcake joints open, people act like it's the second coming of Julia Child. Worse, this "trend" in D.C. is more than a decade late. As the Post correctly points out, it started at Magnolia in New York in 1996.
One bright spot: with D.C. so far behind New York in the baked goods department, we should be able to get a decent bagel shop in a year or two. Now THAT is something worth getting in line for.
11:13 am
i tasted my first Cake Love cupcake 2 weeks ago. it tasted like Passover-cake.
11:15 am
I'd rather have Passover cake any day.
11:22 am
I have never eaten a Cake Love cupcake. Why would I pay $3 for a cupcake ($36 for a bakers dozen) when I can make 18 of the little buggers for around $3, and consume all of them before needing to involve any refrigerators?
11:50 am
In fairness, his cupcakes are all butter w/butter cream frosting, so they do taste like a stick of cold butter when eaten out of the fridge, and they do melt when stored on a hot dash.
But, yeah, even so they're dryer than they should be.
Warren Brown the most-eligible marketing-machine exceeds Warren Brown the baker. Not that he's a bad baker, but rather that he's a superb marketer.
11:54 am
Why leave my house at all if I can make everything at home cheaper?
And how else is New York better than DC? We're dying to know.
I'm such an asshole!
1:49 pm
Why do grown people give a shit about trends in baked goods -- or any other trivial trends, like music or fashion or whatever?
If you like the way something tastes, eat it. If you like the way something sounds, listen to it. If you like the way a pair of pants fit, wear the damn pants.
I could stand to be more tolerant of other people's interests, but this crap's plain ridiculous. Who cares if a bunch of New York City bakeries got popular a decade ago for selling cupcakes? Does that change the way they taste in your mouth?