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Thursday 1 March 2012

The nations favourite - just NOT mine!

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.

10 comments:

  1. im going to make rock buns tommorow now...

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  2. Making a stand for the Bero bake-off..........

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  3. I best not show my face around here again lol!

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  4. Oh no, when I was writing it I was worried about you......I'm sure yours aren't the size of a loaf of bread...and twice as stale......lol

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  5. Thank god its not just me! I feel exactly the same!

    What happened to the humble fairy cake? oh wait, I've got it - you can't charge £2 for a single fairy cake. So it has been given steroids and new name. Tinkerbell has become Mavis Cruet with added glitter.

    I refuse to call them cupcakes, its too American. They ARE jumped up Butterfly cakes. Realistically you can't even call them cakes: on a weight basis its actually buttercream with some cake stuck on the bottom, but I absolutely refuse to use the term "cupcake" without heavy sarcasm and air inverted commas. They are just fairy cakes that have had an overdose of icing and then been flung from one end to the other of a primary schools craft table and sold with whatever sticks.

    AAAAaaaand .....Breathe.

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  6. I vote ditch the cake entirely, I loooooove icing. Mind I'd sell my granny for a decent bit of bakewell tart like.

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  7. Absolutely brilliant !!!
    A proper patisserie based rant ! Love it!
    Flapjack's for me :@)

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  8. See now...I would call them Fairy Cakes personally, but that's becoming an obsolete term now isn't it. Sigh. Butterfly Cakes are my absolute favourite! The more butter icing on any cake the better. I've read this post twice now and at this time of night it's set me off on cake cravings I can fulfil!

    I have a general dislike for 'Americanisms'. Now, having said this, I have had some gorgeous 'Cupcakes' recently. In fact, gorgeous doesn't even describe how good they were. Name aside, they were delicious beyond belief - even the smell was heavenly. In fact GGJ, they are local to us too. But...f they were called Fairy Cakes then they'd taste even better wouldn't they! There must be somebody about who's putting a good old fashioned, true to our heritage, British spin on the Cupcake Craze?

    You've got us going Jools...

    Right, I'm off to order some Cupcakes!

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  9. I made 48 fairy cakes last weekend for my sons birthday. I ate most of them as well. they were delcious decorated with glace icing and various 100s/1000s, sprinkles, sugar balls.

    Buttercream icing should be shot.

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  10. Thank goodness, I was feeling under pressure to like these darn things.

    Long live the fairy cake, vive le revolution!

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