As I write this post I am well aware that I am quite possibly going to become a figure of hatred. I will be stoned outside of the supermarket at spat at in the office. People will post dog poo through my letterbox and the woman in the canteen will wipe bogies in my sandwich (Yes in my mind everyone behaves like they’re 5). Writing what I’m about to write is tantamount to admitting my new eye cream is made from the lungs of puppies or in my spare time I paint pictures using my menstrual blood. Writing what I’m about to write will make you wonder what kind of person I really am?
I HATE CUPCAKES.
I do, it’s true I hate them. I’m sick to bloody death of them and this countries fascination with them, Even the name irritates me.....Cupcakes.....it’s so sodding twee and American. I also hate how they reduce normally sensible women into gushing halfwits (they are no doubt filling bags with dog poo while I’m talking).
Let’s look at your standard cupcake, firstly, I don’t care how much you like cake, they are too big! There is too much cake in a cupcake; secondly they are very often dry. The bakers of the cupcakes won’t know this, because they NEVER EVER eat the cupcakes they bake. They just force them onto other people. There is an annoying thing that happens with cupcakes, they are often that dry that as you’re chewing they form into a giant mush which wedges itself firmly into the roof of your mouth. This means that you are rendered incapable of speech, any thoughts you had of commenting on the dryness of the sponge are pushed from your mind as you consider the real possibility you are about to choke to death.
Then there’s the icing, swirling piles of sickly, often fluorescent icing. No self respecting baker of cupcakes would leave it at the cake and the icing. It is imperative that ‘things’ are shoved into/sprinkled onto the icing. Buttons and bows and sprinkles. Flowers and leaves and sweeties. The cuter the better.
UNACCEPTABLE THINGS TO PUT ON/SPRINKLE OVER A CUPCAKE
- Bacon bits
- A Yorkshire pudding
- Liver (in fact any offal will be frowned upon)
- Shake and Vac
- Animal droppings
- Anything marked ‘warning poison’ or ‘highly flammable’ (unless you are going for something more of a ‘novelty’ cupcake)
The huge pile of icing and ‘stuff’ makes it almost logistically impossible to eat. If you do manage to get the cake in your mouth, there’s a very good chance that the icing is going to go up your nose. At this point it’s highly likely that you’re already choking on a ball of cake, and to add insult to injury you can no longer breathe. Apparently cupcake related deaths are on the rise, this is why.
So I’ve told you why I can’t stand the cake, and I hate the icing but we haven’t discussed flavours and colours. Apparently it is illegal to call cupcakes simply ‘orange’ or ‘chocolate’; you have to give them elaborate and ridiculous names. Should you break this rule you’ll be stripped naked and lined up in front of 10 hysterical, pre-menopausal women, who will pelt you with stale cake until you are dead.
ACCEPTABLE NAMES FOR CUPCAKE FLAVOURS
Orange: Tangerine Dream, Satsuma Crush, Sexy Clementine, Urine Infection
Lemon: Citrus Twizzle, Lemon Ladyboy, Sour Jaundice
Chocolate: Double Bubble Mocho Choco, Chocca Doopy, Poop Shute
At this point I’d like to make a suggestion. We should remember that we aren’t American and we as a nation are damn good bakers, we should ban Cupcakes, that’s right, BAN THEM! Instead we should go back to baking the things of our childhood, that aren’t dry, or sickly or likely to suffocate you. We should consign cupcakes to the noughties and start a craze for ‘retro baking’.
THINGS WE SHOULD BE BAKING
- Butterfly cakes, with jam and a bit of butter cream, dusted with icing sugar
- Fairy Cakes, with glace icing and hundreds and thousands, silver balls or half a cherry
- Coconut Haystacks, made with condensed milk, shaped in eggcups
- Rock Buns/Rock Cake, ugly little heaps of fruit studded cake, great with a cuppa
- Maids of Honour – a pastry case filled with jam and sponge
- Jam Tarts – sticky, jammy loveliness.
Bring them all back. Bring back Victoria sponge, and pineapple upside-down cake, and treacle tart and crispy cakes. Let us return to our Bero book roots, America can have their 2quid a pop, cupcakes back, (oh bloody hell I’m going all independence day here, I’ll be stood on my coffee table in a minute with a megaphone), anyway you get the point. I don’t like cupcakes!
I’ll get my coat.
