Cupcakes: The Dessert of the Future

Step aside, Creme Brulee. Move it or lose it, Birthday Cake! Hit the Road, cobbler! What is the latest craze in the ever-growing world of baking? CUPCAKES. If you haven't heard yet, now you have! There are bakeries that specialize in cupcakes popping up all over the country...from San Francisco to New York City and everywhere in between. Apparently people have realized how fun and lucrative baking cupcakes can be - a cupcake is almost like a blank canvas for an artist...a simple dessert with a smorgasbord of creative possibilities.

Sprinkles Bakery is the world's first "haute-couture" cupcake bakery, based out of Los Angeles and now having a total of nine locations including a new bakery opening in the Georgetown-Washington DC area. You can go online and purchase some of their fabulously delicious and decorative cupcakes, including the peace cupcakes for New Years celebrations and XOX cupcakes for the upcoming Valentine's Day (both pictured to the right). The opening of the Sprinkles Bakery has started a super trend within the baking industry...you could call them the original Cupcake Bakery...the trend-starters. Some of the ingenius and scrumptious flavors served up from the Sprinkles Bakery includes: walnut-studded carrot cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting, spiced chai tea cake with chai-vanilla frosting (drooling on your keyboard yet?), Belgian dark chocolate cake with bittersweet chocolate frosting, and a chocolate chip-studded peanut butter cake with peanut butter frosting.

The next featured Cupcake Bakery hits closer to home for me. The Cupcake Spot is your one-stop shop for amazing original flavors, as well as some new twists on the original cupcake flavors. They have two convenient locations in the Tampa Bay area, one in Tampa and another in St. Petersburg. Founded by a young married couple, The Longos, who have inhabited the Tampa Bay area since childhood, the Cupcake Spot has a great rapport with locals and is Tampa Bay's one and only specialty cupcake bakery. The locals' favorites at the Cupcake Spot include their signature "Better Thans" cupcake: a chocolate chip cupcake with cream cheese and chocolate chip frosting (apparently passed down by an Aunt Ginny). This particular cupcake was even entitled "Best Small Dessert of Tampa Bay 2009" by the Tampa Bay Metro Magazine. They are constantly experimenting with different flavors involving each holiday season, more recently pumpkin cupcakes and s'more cupcakes. Check out their menu at www.thecupcakespotinc.com. And if you are ever in the Tampa Bay area, be sure to make a stop at one of their bakeries...you will not be disappointed!

So...one would think that a forward-thinking, trend-setting cupcake bakery could only be found in the majorly developed cities of America like New York City or Washington DC or Tampa...but one could be wrong! Albuquerque, New Mexico even has their own specialty cupcake bakery...if you can believe it! Their name is Cake Fetish and they are absolute pioneers within the Albuquerque baking community. On Mondays they serve Cherry Bomb, Black Tie, Berry White and Caramel Apple Cupcakes. On Tuesdays one can find a Hotcakes flavored cupcake, Chacha cupcakes, Amore and Snowball cupcakes on the menu. On Wednesdays, reward your taste buds with a Cherry Limeade or Cookies N' Cream cupcake. On Thursdays...well, you get the point. Their flavors are new and exciting and simply must be tasted if you are ever visiting the Albuquerque, NM area. I may make a special trip out to the desert while purposely starving myself specifically to be able to satisfy my taste buds and stomach with a lusty PB&J or Margarita Madness cupcake masterpiece.

Another well known up-and-coming L.A. bakery is Sweet E's Bake Shop ran by a cute Texan girl named Erica. Sweet E's cupcakes are mini-sized but packed with a candied, tongue-tingling punch. Erica's passion in the kitchen and determination in life has spilt onto the baking world in the form of a Bake Shop that serves up mini-cupcakes in flavors such as Chocolate Peppermint, Molten Chocolate Chip and Strawberry Lemonade. She has chosen to specialize in mini-cupcakes in order to appease the consumers' sweet tooth, without over-filling them on the calories. Her Bake Shop is even Kosher certified...for those of you who would like to know! Erica's Bake Shop just opened a new store front in L.A., but they are also mobile and orders can be made online. Although this hub is being partial to cupcakes, Sweet E's Bake Shop does more than cupcakes...just have a look for yourself! www.sweetesbakeshop.com. Erica was recently in an episode of Cupcake Wars, which you can watch below.

This new cupcake craze has even taken to the television screen in the form of a new show on the Food Network - Cupcake Wars. I believe it airs on Sunday nights at 10 PM EST. Cupcake Wars takes business-owning cupcake bakers from all across the country and willingly gives them a kitchen, supplies, and baking assistants to pull off some quite challenging baking assignments. Usually the contestants are given a theme or idea to take to their kitchen and create something that is not only tasty but is also aesthetically pleasing. Recently, the Thanksgiving episode of Cupcake Wars aired and four contestants were given their holiday task to use the traditional Thanksgiving Feast as an inspiration for a holiday-demonstrating cupcake. Some failed miserably at the task, others were creative and made Thanksgiving come to life in the form of a humble cupcake!

We see a whole plethora of bakers quenching their creative thirst with cupcake architecture...but that isn't to say that people without baking degrees can't unleash their creative juices in the form of a cupcake, too!

Check out the iPhone cupcakes to the right...how adorable and beyond creative are they?! I especially like the "you've got mail" icon on the blue cupcake in the front. Whoever made this batch of cupcakes also took the time to make them square...not your typical circle-shaped cupcake by any means! You can take some inspiration from this batch of cupcakes and bake a batch that are triangular-shaped...maybe decorate them as traffic signs? Or make diamond-shaped cupcakes and sprinkle them with different colored-shimmery frosting to give a jewelry effect. The possibilities are endless...with a little imagination and basic baking techniques.

What would make your mouth water more than a scrumptious vanilla cupcake? Well, I'll tell you... a scrumptious vanilla cupcake with candy bars, popsicles and soda pop right on top! You can pick up little cupcake toppers and decor on amazon.com or at your nearest party store. Jump out of the cupcake-box and find other little items that could be used as cupcake-toppers...maybe pretend princess jewelry for a little girl's birthday cupcake? Any little toy would do well on top of a themed cupcake...just be sure to tell whomever is consuming the cupcakes to remove the toys first! For a little boy's birthday, maybe some XMen figurines? Spiderman figurines? For Halloween, plastic spider rings for the top of the cupcake and maybe some gummy worms right in the middle? For weddings, edible orchids or marzipan bows.

If you need to brush  up on your baking techniques, try out some cupcake recipes from www.marthastewart.com.  She has some simple cupcake recipes for even the most amateur cupcake-baker, as well as some more involved cupcake recipes for the more advanced baker.  And I can vouch for Martha Stewart, in the fact that every recipe I have ever used from her site turns out swimmingly!  Of course if you would like some video tutorials on baking skills, youtube has a surfeit of cupcake 101 videos.  A dab of practice and a pinch of determination and you will be a cupcake pro in no time!

If you are aching to do some baking, be brave and allow the ever-inspiring cupcake to liberate the fury of your culinary creative juices!

• YieldMakes 24

Patriotic Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups cake flour (not self-rising), sifted
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 5 large eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon pure almond extract
• 1 cup nonfat buttermilk
• 2 recipes Cream Cheese Frosting Cream Cheese Frosting
• 1/2 pint blueberries for decorating
• 1/2 pint raspberries for decorating
• White sprinkles and nonpareils for decorating

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line two 12-holed muffin pans with baking cups; set aside. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and sugar on medium speed until pale, light, and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes. With the mixer running, add eggs, vanilla extract, and almond extract; beat until combined.

3. With mixer on low speed, add 1 cup reserved flour mixture; mix until combined. Add 1/2 cup buttermilk; combine. Alternate adding flour mixture and buttermilk, ending with flour, until all has been incorporated.

4. Fill each baking cup with 1/4 cup batter; batter should almost reach tops of cups. Bake until a cake tester inserted into the middle comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Transfer tins to a wire rack to cool.

5. Remove cupcakes from tins, and frost with cream-cheese frosting. If desired, use a pastry bag fitted with a plain writing tip to pipe letters or designs onto cupcakes. Decorate with berries, sprinkles, and nonpareils.