I hope you enjoy this issue of Between the Layers! Share it with your friends. We Still Need Cupcakes - No. 358It’s been 25 years since the Carrie Cupcake + an apple cupcake with a genius brown sugar frosting to bake now
I CAN GUESS WHAT I WAS DOING when Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) ate pink-frosted cupcakes on a bench outside New York City’s Magnolia Bakery 25 years ago. I was probably plugging in a Crockpot to cook chicken with taco seasoning for supper. Or doing laundry, making sure someone was practicing piano or getting a bath, and scheduling tomorrow’s business call in a sliver of free time. I had three children 10 and under plus two older parents living in my house, a dog to walk, a marriage, and a bestselling book that led to frequent appearances on QVC and Good Morning America, thus my ability on the random business trip to watch Sex and the City while ordering room service. The show would never have met the PG standards of home. Over cupcakes and dressed in stylish Jimmy Choos, these girlfriends revealed secrets—Carrie had a crush!—as they licked pink frosting and peeled back the paper liners of their cupcakes to tease the buttery vanilla cake within. To me, the sexiest part of the show was the cupcake.
If ours was the so-called “sandwich” generation, with lives situated between obligations to parents as well as children, then in 2000 my life was an all-you-can-eat-drag-it-through-the-garden kind of sandwich. I knew my day to day wasn’t anything close to the Sex and the City gals, so perhaps that’s the delicious pleasure I felt when allowed in on their conversations. I’d never spend that much for a pair of shoes, but I would bake those cupcakes at home. I even wrote a book about cupcakes. And eventually I visited the famed Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker Street in the West Village, which was opened in 1996 by Jennifer Appel and Allysa Torey. They began making cupcakes with leftover cake batter, and those cupcakes with their signature flat swirl of icing with a deep crevasse would become wildly popular. Appel left the business to start her own bakery, and Torey sold to entrepreneur Steve Abrams in 2006, who then sold to private equity about four years ago. Still very much a New York thing and super-popular with tourists, there are 10 Magnolias in the city, plus one in LA, one in Chicago, and seven internationally.
Cupcakes have such an interesting story. They are rooted in World War II America when women would bake small cakes and bring them to their factory jobs to share with co-workers. They go back even further to a time when a ‘’cup cake’’ was assembled with a cup of this and that and baked in wood ovens in what were known as “gem” pans. But believe me, neither of these hardscrabble scenarios produced the kind of fanciful cupcake Carrie and Miranda indulged in. Once Magnolia Bakery shot to stardom, it created a Carrie Cupcake, which is still on the menu—vanilla cake, pale pink buttercream, and sugar daisy on top.
It’s not surprising we became so enamored with cupcakes. The timing was right. We hadn’t yet experienced the horrors of 9/11. We could walk through airport security with shoes on back then, and with a full water bottle, too. A year earlier we had been shocked by the Columbine High School massacre in April 1999, but surely as cupcakes soared in popularity we were naive as to what tragedies lay ahead. And now, writing this ode to cupcakes, it’s clear that even cupcakes can’t sugarcoat the frightening and divisive time in which we live in America.
The late New Orleans chef and restaurateur Leah Chase would simmer gumbo and fry chicken to place on the table at her restaurant during the Civil Rights years when violence swept the South in reaction to desegregation laws. She knew the power of food when it came to bringing people together. You can’t be enemies when you’re sharing a meal, she once told me. She fed their souls, too. Eerily, political violence like that seen in the 1960s has been on the rise in America. It played out last week with the murder of influencer Charlie Kirk. We sense it’s not over. To me, cupcakes are a feel good, reconciliation food just like gumbo or fried chicken. Young, old, black, white, gay, straight, Republican, Democrat—it doesn’t matter to cupcakes. And like Carrie and Miranda, pulling back the paper liner to find the cake inside is a gentle ritual we can share. And if I had to bake the perfect cupcake for now it would be something pure and honest that suits everyone. It might be a vanilla cupcake with sprinkles like I baked by the dozens for my granddaughter’s fourth birthday. It might be a cupcake that uses ingredients already in the kitchen—shredded apple and cinnamon—I baked last weekend.
It would definitely be an honest and hard-working cupcake, the kind of cupcake women in the ‘40s might have made when people in America baked from a rationed ingredient list and worked together to fight fascism. It would be a practical cupcake pulled together without a mixer, with just a bowl and a spoon. It would be a cupcake to eat any hour of any day and share with friends and family even if they think differently about politics than I do. Cupcakes show us that we’ve got more in common than we do differences. Cupcakes don’t fan the flames of politics or create divides. And with sprinkles or pink icing or even the last two apples on the kitchen counter, this is why we still need cupcakes. - xo, Anne What’s your go-to cupcake? How do cupcakes make you feel today?PS. I’m going to tiptoe carefully here…this column began as an homage to the Carrie Cupcake with reflections on how my life was different 25 years ago. Now we are situated in a firestorm, which as a journalist I cannot ignore. I don’t condone the hateful comments Kirk made in his life. I also agree with former President George W. Bush when he said members of other political parties shouldn’t be our enemies—“they are our fellow citizens.” Here is a quote and a link I find helpful now:
And from Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic, the job of journalists is to report the truth.
THE RECIPE:
Cinnamon Apple Cupcakes with a Genius Brown Sugar FrostingSo here you have the most basic cupcake (or muffin) recipe for today. You just need to decide if you are using apples, zucchini, or carrots. If not apples, then pears. And if pears, then some freshly grated nutmeg with them, or a little grated lemon zest. Be aware that zucchini is more watery than carrots or apples so you might not need all the liquid. And the frosting is a dream, something I created on a whim because I didn’t want to pull out the electric mixer. Makes about 18 cupcakes Bake: About 25 minutes
My Genius Brown Sugar Frosting (double for extra-tall frosted cupcakes!)Place 4 tablespoons (half a stick) lightly salted butter, 1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, and a pinch of salt in a small saucepan over low heat and stir until the butter melts. Turn off the heat and turn the mixture into a small mixing bowl. Turn 4 ounces (half a container) of whipped cream cheese into the bowl, and stir with a rubber spatula until well combined. Place in the fridge about 10 minutes to thicken up, then you are ready to frost the cupcakes. You’re on the free list for Anne Byrn: Between the Layers. If you’re liking what you’re reading, why don’t you become a paying subscriber for more recipes, stories, and content.
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