08.16.06 The Cupcake Press Speaks!

In a world of vast uncertainty, here’s a rock-solid guarantee: spend five minutes scrolling through this Blog and your salivary glands will start squirting like a SuperSoaker.

Five minutes more and a weird rush of dizzy expectant energy will begin rushing from your tummy-region to your fingers and toes. Five minutes more and you’ll be scrambling for your car keys and heading toward that fancy new neighborhood boutique bakery that’s doing an astonishingly brisk business in? gourmet cupcakes. You know the one ? Sprinkles (Oprah’s choice in Bev Hills) or Magnolia (The West Village shop immortalized in SNL’s ?Lazy Sunday?) or Love at First Bite (the Berkley boutique famous for its strawberry strewn Pretty in Pink).

With its vivid close-ups and gushing captions, Cupcakes Take the Cake (motto: ?all cupcakes all the time?) is the Hustler Magazine for the cupcake crowd. Authors Rachel Kramer Bussel, Alizinha and Nichelle are hot n? savvy New Yorkers who serve up the most exotic and gorgeous kiddie deserts ever —  the junky “care bears cupcake” that would cause conniptions in a four-year-old to a sublime “green tea, lavender and honey bombe” (pictured here) suited for the most urbane chowhound.

The charming Ms. Bussel recently contacted me with questions about how the surge in popularity of cupcakes relates to the rejuvenile phenomenon. She posted a transcript of our interview today? A quick excerpt:

What I love about cupcakes is, first of all, how they invite such pure and unadulterated appreciation in adults. Other things I studied—from classic toys to comic books to kid games like dodgeball and rock paper scissors—have been rediscovered with heavy helpings of irony or kitsch. Not so with cupcakes. The very sight of a well-frosted made-with-love cupcake instantly triggers a happy, wondrous childlike response. Gorgeous, tasty and quickly consumed, cupcakes are icons of kidhood. And as an added bonus, many of the masterminds creating cupcakes are bringing whole new levels of sophistication and artistry to a treat that’s for too long been thought of as junky supermarket food.