Parallel Universes: The Times Online (UK) article about the psychology of cupcakes

[Laura]

I'm more than a little surprised by this development: not that Britain would imitate the US trend for exotic, expensive gourmet cupcakes marketed to adults,or that one of their well-regarded newspapers would have an article about this phenomenon which also lists a number of cupcake shops, but I was under the impression that the Brits called 'em "Fairy Cakes"! :confused:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article6835957.ece

From Times Online
September 16, 2009
The psychology of cupcakes
Cupcakes are on-the-up cakes as we retreat into nostalgia and treat ourselves to a little bit of affordable luxury

Multicoloured cupcakes have been the surprise winner in our credit crunched times. Cupcake businesses, mainly run by women, are booming as we comfort-eat and treat ourselves to a little bit of affordable luxury: at £2 each they are far cheaper than the latest ‘it-bag’ or a restaurant meal. Cupcake cafes, bakeries, blogs, decorating classes are popping up all over the place and the trend shows no sign of slowing down.

Cupcakes, like many culinary inventions, originated by accident when leftover cake mix was used up in pottery cup moulds in 19th-century America. During the 1950s, cupcakes became synonymous with motherly love and childhood innocence as a ritual developed from taking a tray of cupcakes into school on a child’s birthday.

In the late 90s, the TV series Sex and the City propelled cupcakes from the classroom to Vogue. As Carrie and Miranda sunk their perfect teeth into a thick layer of pink icing outside Manhattan’s Magnolia Bakery they launched a cupcake craze. Back in the UK, Nigella salivated over cupcakes in her retro kitchen and cupcake tiers fast replaced the traditional wedding cake.

Women had been given the green light to eat cake. Unfortunately, back in the real world a cupcake weighs in at 400 calories (this is never ever mentioned): nearly a quarter of a woman’s recommended daily calorie intake.

Eating a cupcake appears to be a rebellious ‘two fingers up’ to the diet police. But have we really escaped the gorging, guilt and denial cycle that has created a hugely profitable diet industry? Psychotherapist and author of Bodies, Professor Susie Orbach, says: "I think it is more to do with pretending to defy the trend against deprivation but doing it in a cutesy cutesy way?an updated version of naughty but nice."

Some US states have banned cupcakes in schools fuelling a nutrition versus nostalgia debate. In the UK, a recent government advert showing a cupcake-eating girl warns: "Is a premature death so tempting?" But cake is not the major culprit here: the real problem lies with our diet of processed foods and drinks pumped full of cheap fats and sugars.

Nikki Cameron founded award-winning Country Cupcakes in 2007 after a tip-off from a friend about the US craze. She attributes her success to creating a high-quality food: "I sell real cake made with good-quality simple ingredients. I adapted the US recipe to suit UK tastes, so mine are less sweet with restrained pastel decorations: pale pin is my bestseller."

Boutique bakeries are a key part of this trend with gorgeous retro interiors - 1950’s black and white chequered floors, pastel pink and green walls, and old-fashioned wooden trays displaying the range of flavours from peanut butter and chocolate to rosewater, are all part of the appeal. Customers step away from office life, back in time to an idealised world of 1950s' happy domesticity as opposed to the anxious Revolutionary Road version. The modern cupcake operates on many levels of desirability combining the infantilised language of ‘sparkles and sprinkles’, highly personalised ‘me-time’ indulgence and aspirational packaging.

Cake made with high-quality ingredients should be an enjoyable part of our diet. But perhaps we should move on from the super-sized US cupcakes, take pride in our own baking culture and bring back fairy cakes.

For more information on National Cupcake Week visit the website of the British Baker magazine

Where to buy Britain's best cupcakes

Country Cupcakes
The Podium, Northgate Street, Bath (T: 07801 280910; www.countrycupcakes.com/)
Elegant, pastel-coloured icing with glitter and pink roses decorations. Cake decorating classes.

Cupcake
70 Bell Street, Glasgow (T: 0141 552 2195; www.cupcakeglasgow.com/)
Lovely shop in foodie Merchant City area. All the favourites: ‘99 chocolate’ or simple lemon, and a cocktail range featuring vodka and rum.

Hummingbird Bakery
133 Portobello Road, London W11 (and 47 Old Brompton Road, Kensington) (T: 02072296446; www.hummingbirdbakery.com/flash.html)
Expect queues at this American-inspired bakery. Sells the iconic Magnolia Bakery ‘Red Velvet’ cupcake. Make your own with their cookbook.

Indulgence Cupcake Company
Brighton and Hove (T: 01273 419727; www.indulgence-cupcakes.co.uk/)
Family-run bakery where you can order customers’ favourite, ‘Or-Eh-Oh!’ vanilla butter icing with Oreo cookies.

Macaroon
569 Bury Road, Rochdale (T: 01706 558 565; www.macaroonbyalisonseagrave.co.uk/)
Run by Harvey Nichols' former pastry chef Alison Seagrave serving up delicious light cupcakes as well as Laduree-style macaroons.

Primrose Bakery 69 Gloucester Avenue, London NW1 (and Covent Garden branch: 42 Tavistock Street) (T: 020 7483 4222; www.primrosebakery.org.uk/)
Popular with local celebrities. Specialities include: peanut butter and rose and ginger with very pretty decorations.

Sweet Tooth Cupcakery
9A Oswald Road, Chorlton, Manchester (T: 07855 765355; www.sweettoothcupcakery.co.uk/)
Beautiful retro interior with exquisite cakes: try their ‘Kylie’ raspberry-dotted vanilla sponge with real raspberry buttercream.

[Indulgence Cupcakes]

Hello, British cupcake company here!

We refer to fairy cakes as a smaller version of a cupcake. Fair cakes have the same diameter than cupcakes but are about half the height. They would also have less icing (frosting) on them.

We sell all ranges of cupcakes in Brighton (http://www.indulgence-cupcakes.co.uk) and are listed on this article :)

[Princess Cupcake]

Thank you for educating us Indulgence; I hadn't noticed any differences in the heights of cupcakes in pictures labeled "fairy cake" on Google Images, but now that you mention it, some of them do look to be a bit on the short side. I also learned that some people suggest fairy cakes should be made with a lighter cake mix like sponge cake.

[Laura]

I had been surprised to read an article about a place that sold cupcakes while on a visit to England last February. I had not believed that Brits would ever call 'em cupcakes. :huh: Having lived my life "across the pond" in the USA while watching the occasional British comedy re-run, I had believed that what the Brits called "fairy cakes" were the same thing that we Yanks called "cupcakes". Apparently there are some slight and subtle differences, and it is only in recent years that the genuine American type cupcake has become commercially available in the UK. According to the article below, the Brits seem to think that American cupcakes in their present form are sufficiently unlike fairy cakes as to warrant a separate designation. Thus, apparently, England now has both "fairy cakes" and "cupcakes".
from Anglotopia (http://www.anglotopia.net/london/dispatches-from-london-a-tiny-piece-of-america/)
Dispatches From London: A Tiny piece of America
May 5, 2009 by kat
Filed under Dispatches from London, Living in the UK, London

I’m always a bit caught off guard when an American trend invades England. Three years ago, posh bowling alleys were springing up all over SoHo and cheerleading and line-dancing are available at the hottest dance studios in London. There’s one I’ve been avoiding though, as I think it’s almost too silly. However, when one of my best high school friends asks me to indulge in the hottest trend that’s not going away, how could I say no? So on a sunny Sunday we found ourselves scouring South Kensington for a little piece of America: the perfect cupcake.

I hadn’t realised that cupcakes were oh-so-American until a few years back I was subjected to a school fete and the English bake sale. I encountered “fairy cakes” and are kind of like the American cupcake’s lackluster discount-bin version. Smaller, a bit deformed, and yes, they taste nice as anything with butter, sugar, and flour will do – but a home-baked good with none of the home-baked goodness. No wonder Hummingbird Bakery turns out 2,000 cupcakes a day.

Since Hummingbird opened its doors in 2003 in West London’s Nottinghill they unexpectatantly started the London cupcake craze winning over the likes of Elle Macpherson and Gwyneth Paltrow. Suddenly Kate Moss led the fashionistas to the cake like moths to the flame after she was seen buying them at Primrose Bakery in North London. Soon Outsider Tart became the official cupcake provider at London Fashion Week and Lily Jones, a designer-turned-cupcake maker (Lily Vanilli), started selling in trendy East London at Swanfield Market and at the Vintage Heaven shop on Columbia Road. And they’re all expanding. Hummingbird opened in South Kensington (where I did my “research”), released a cookbook, and is due to open a third location in SoHo. Covent Garden is now covered by Candy Cakes and a second Primrose Bakery.

Keen to cash in on the tiny cake, megachain M&S recently sent a team to the Institute of Culinary Education of New York to study—you guessed it—American cupcake baking in hopes of adapting them to the mass British market. Outsider Tart appears to be the only true ex-pat enterprise on the cupcake scene, (even Hummingbird is owned by an American-educated Brit). Their website explains their journey:

“A couple of professional guys moved from the United States to live and work in London last year -but discovered that good, wholesome, home made cupcakes, sweet pies and fresh tarts were hard to come by. Outsiders as they both are, they set about rectifying what they saw.”

You can find them at farmer’s markets and SoHo on Sundays.

Not all Brits have been pleased about the cupcake invasion. Columnist Jan Moir at the Daily Mail weighed in on the debate with this pleasing anti-American rant (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1170824/JAN-MOIR-Its-Nigellas-cupcakes-need-worry-about.html):

“What is going on? There’s something so un-British about the cupcake. It’s all flounce and flummery, paved with butter cream so thick emit bat creams of horror. Yet just like the GIs, it is oversexed, over-paved and over here.”




Fairies and Frosting

So why all the fuss? What’s the difference anyway between American cupcakes and British fairy cakes anyway? Can’t we all just get along?

Firstly, it seems to be in the design. Fairy cakes have a domed, rounded top while cupcakes are flat. Fairy cakes are smaller whilst the American counterpart is, well, American-sized. Then there’s the cake itself or lack of it—cupcakes have a higher ratio of frosting to cake (1/3 to 2/3) and there’s butter cream in the sponge. Research has found that the British palate cannot handle the sickly sweetness of a traditional cupcake and M&S product designers had to tone down the cakes for the Brits with some fruit compote in the centre.

And most importantly according to my cupcake companion Katherine, is the topping. Call it icing in England or frosting in America, the design is where the cupcake puts the fairy cake to shame. Cupcakes are drowned in butter cream and ornate designs and traditionally, fairy cakes had a thin, watery layer of icing sugar with lemon. Judging by the display in the storefront, Hummingbird has capitalised on there just being something innately cute about cupcakes.

After some debate in the fast moving queue, Katherine settled on a cherry cupcake. “It’s a tiny piece of luxury in tough times,” she explained. We emerged into the sunshine to walk along the Thames and catch-up about our respective ex-pat lives in London. And the cost for a tiny piece of luxury? At Hummingbird they range from £1.55 to £1.85.

Check out the Hummingbird Bakery’s Website (http://www.hummingbirdbakery.com/flash.html) here.

Author Info - Late 20-something Bostonian study abroad junkie turned English lawyer who lives, works, and dares to cycle in London. Read more from this author

[Laura]

from Maison Cupcakes:
http://blog.maisoncupcake.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/SprinklesGiveaway.jpg
I’m still clearing the decks of Blogger posts that didn’t get published before I switched to WordPress, so today I’m sharing some cupcakes and a birthday cake that I made over the summer. On reviewing these photos I decided these specimens look more like fairy cakes but I am still calling them cupcakes as hardly anyone calls them fairy cakes lately.
http://blog.maisoncupcake.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/droetker1.jpg


Fairy cakes are more delicate, with less icing and more suited to children’s parties. Those buttercream heavy beasts sold in the West End would start sheer sugar warfare at the average toddler’s get together. When I make cupcakes, I usually lop off the tops and give a flat surface of buttercream… although a hybrid between the two, I’d call them cupcakes not fairy cakes. Yet here I left sponge showing… that to me, is the thing that marks these out as fairy cakes.


http://blog.maisoncupcake.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/SprinklesGiveaway.jpg
I have had a little clear out of my vast cupcake sprinkle supplies and come up with a selection of items to give away.

A couple of them are Best Before the end of this month and dare I say it, the jelly diamonds were best before the end of July 2010 although to my knowledge noone has ever been poisoned by jelly sweets that were 2-3 months past their date. Anyway, it’s unlikely I will get to use these in the immediate future so I thought I’d pass them to a new home and have also thrown in a few other goodies that have several months left before they explode or whatever.

The selection comprises:

Dr Oetker Chocolate Hearts
Dr Oetker Barbie Glitter Writing Icing Gels
Morrison’s Jelly Diamonds
Morrison’s Hundreds and Thousands
Waitrose Cooks’ Ingredients “A Scatter of Mini Marshmallows”
Rules

This giveaway is open to all readers with a UK mailing address. International readers are also welcome to comment on the post however a new name will be selected until a UK reader has been drawn. The winner will be chosen using an online randomiser and announced in a subsequent post on this blog.

Closing date: midnight BST on Sunday October 10th.

Just one way to enter today, simply leave a comment on the bottom of this post telling me once and for all, Are they cupcakes or fairy cakes? Does anyone really care?

Good luck!