No, you’re not reading an article from the year 2000. According to Google Trends, cupcakes are making a comeback. Confectionery can do that, unlike other unsavoury sensations from 20 years ago such as Von Dutch truck driver hats, alcopops and R Kelly. You can argue about good taste, but you can’t argue with what tastes good.
The cupcake’s return makes absolute sense during the pandemic: not only are we baking more, but after nearly 11 weeks in lockdown, we’re also ready for the heady decadence of a cake that we don’t have to share, is full of heretofore elusive ingredients and offers sugar hits in spades.
From traybakes to storecupboard staples and missing-ingredient bakes, we have been doing some pretty worthy cooking recently. Our breath of fresh air? The cupcake. Here are 10 of the best.
The nostalgia cupcake
In the UK, cupcakes are fairy cakes rebranded. Before their bigger, snazzier US counterparts invaded British shores, fairy cakes decorated children’s party tables across the land alongside iced gems and crisps. Felicity Cloake’s perfect fairy cakes capture their understated charm: a light vanilla sponge with a basic icing-sugar-and-water glaze and a smattering of hundreds and thousands.
The ‘as seen on screen’ cupcake
The aforementioned American invasion was the result of Sex and the City’s third series, in which Carrie and Miranda discussed the former’s most recent crush over pink-iced vanilla cupcakes from the Magnolia bakery. The Bleecker St eatery became an institution, featuring in NYC’s SATC tour, and inspired the opening of equivalent bakeries across the world, such as the Hummingbird in London. And the cupcake took off.
The goddess cupcake
Nigella is rarely one to miss a trend, although she somehow always dodges the bandwagon. She embraced cupcake fever in 1998 when her second book, the baking bible How to Be a Domestic Goddess came out, with these chocolate cherry cupcakes on the cover. They’re rich and indulgent, as a cupcake should be, elevated beyond sickly sweetness with tart cherry jam and refined still more with a ganache icing.
The all-allergies-considered cupcake
You will never have to individually bake for a multitude of dietary requirements again with this one-size-fits-all cake. After 17 attempts at nailing a cupcake that excluded gluten, dairy and egg, the writer Susannah Booth came up with this chocolate number. And vegan cake – or any cake to accommodate intolerances – isn’t just for those who abstain from some ingredients. Meera Sodha’s zingy blood orange and polenta cakes (one for winter, but you could substitute the blood orange for almost any available citrus) and Lily Vanilli’s ultimate vegan cake are both testament.
The summer cupcake(s)
Suddenly, summer fruit is upon us. Lockdown box deliveries are filled with strawberries, raspberries, peaches, apricots and more. Channel a cancelled Wimbledon with Claire Ptak’s strawberry cupcakes alongside Pimm’s, or Anna Jones’s pleasingly sharp apricot, blackberry and almond cakes on sunny afternoons. For a head-turning colour combo inspired by Franco-Japanese bakeries, try Lily Vanilli’s matcha and raspberry cakes.
The PBB cupcake
The cousin of the better-known PBJ (peanut butter and jam), PBB cupcakes replace the jam with banana. The not-too-sweet sponge is a banana bread enriched with sour cream and egg yolk, while the tooth-aching cream cheese frosting, piled high, hits sweet and salty notes with much sugar and salted peanuts.
The breakfast cupcake
Starting the day with cake is definitely OK if Nigel Slater says it is. These chocolate and blackberry cakes put enough fruit, nuts and oats to work to make it feel passable. In any case, we all live in denial about the sugar content of marmalade ...
The shouldn’t-work-but-does cupcake
Vegetable cakes are nothing new: classic carrot, piquant parsnip, spiced courgette ... In my search for the latter in cupcake form, I fell upon these, which combine some of my favourite savoury ingredients – courgette, lemon, dill – in cakes. Mint and basil have already shown us that soft herbs are at home in sweet dishes, so a lurid-green dill frosting laced with lemon is surely meant to be.
The multicoloured cupcake
Those with an appetite for a flamboyant sugar trip, look no further than Kim Joy’s marble cupcakes, the Dame Ednas of the cupcake world.
The dessert cupcake
Sometimes, cake consumption can seem like a daytime pursuit, designed to accompany morning coffee or afternoon tea, but not to follow your evening meal. Step forward brown butter cupcake brownies, which have so many good things going on at once: the incomparable chewy chocolatey punch of brownie, the nutty goodness of brown butter and a dollop of ice-cream, all in cupcake form.
The almost-healthy cupcake
Replacing refined sugar with maple syrup, butter with coconut oil, and full of carrots, banana, almonds, seeds and spices, Anna Jones’s carrot and cardamom cakes with maple frosting give you the hit you are looking for in a cupcake, without the wallop.
