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| Cupcakes on parade at American Cupcakes, San Francisco, CA |
On July 9 2000, the world changed forever. HBO’s popular drama Sex and the City, addressed racism and dating a smoker in the same episode. And as Carrie Bradshaw, announced what was to be her biggest relationship that season, viewers watched her grappling with the biggest cupcake in New York City and a nation experienced collective food envy.
The “homme du jour” was a carpenter called
Aiden: the “plat du jour” a yellow cupcake, topped with raspberry frosting,
from the Magnolia bakery on the lower West Side. Carrie’s fidelity to Aiden
lasted four weeks: America’s fidelity to the cup cake is still going strong,
and unlike Mr Big, even the sexy French macaron couldn’t dull America’s
appetite for these red velvet devils.
In the thirteen or so years since, the
cupcake has made a bid for world domination. This is partly due to the fact
that, unlike the delicate gallic marvels, the supersized American cupcake can
be easily baked at home, providing the housewives of the world with a kind of
personal gratification the writers at SATC weren’t thinking of.
The SATC cupcake was plain sponge, topped
with pink buttercream frosting, piped in a simple swirl. The class of 2013
features flavors such as caramel fleur de sel, s’mores, as well as the
ubiquitous red velvet, which has become more American than apple pie, (also
available in cupcake form).
Back in 2009, I made a late-night
pilgrimage to Magnolia on Bleeker Street, still busy at a quarter of midnight.
And on a recent Sunday morning in San Francisco, the sunny city serenaded with
foghorns from across the Bay, I decided to pay a visit to three of the city’s
finest.
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| Red Velvet cupcakes at American Cupcake |
Next was Kara’s Cupcakes, the quieter branch on Scott Street, rather than
the Ghirardelli Square location. Here, I chose fleur de sel: chocolate
buttercream on a chocolate sponge, with a salty caramel interior. Maybe it was
the temperature it was served at, but this just didn’t do it for me. The
buttercream was hard and bland, the cake fell to pieces in my hand, and the
caramel interior popped out like an eyeball on to the plate.
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| Chocolate and Red Velvet at Kara's Cupcakes |
Finally, came Susie Cakes on Chestnut Street. The shop interior had much more of a mom’s-kitchen atmosphere than
the other two and so did the cakes. The raspberry cupcake, was of the original
Sex and the City generation: an ordinary sponge, but topped with a deliciously
tart strawberry buttercream.
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| Traditional cupcakes at Susie Cakes |
With the general availability of cupcakes
worldwide (even Zurich has its first dedicated store, where English is spoken
for the benefit of bored ex-pat banker’s wives) it was great to revisit the
cupcake on home soil. Even if American Cupcake’s menu (featuring—I kid you not—chicken deep
fried in red velvet batter) suggests that stores are beginning to branch out to
keep custom, I found the great American cupcake alive and well and living at
the foot of Pacific Heights.
