There's Something Fundamentally Wrong with Cupcakes

Consider the muffin—which is oft maligned as merely a socially acceptable way to eat cupcakes for breakfast but in fact possess the crucial distinguishing trait of homogeneity.

Anyone who believes this is a heretic and must be burned at the stake.

But in all seriousness, muffins are (in my opinion) superior to cupcakes in every way. In density, texture, flavor balance, and appropriate level of sweetness, they're just a generally more pleasant experience than cupcakes ever were to me.

I'm going to weigh in with some professional experience in cake engineering (I was a pastry cook and baker for a while).

I generally agree with the article's distaste for building something that looks like a handmeal, but can't be encompassed with a normal human mouth. There are whole industries for manufacturing snack cakes that can be eaten easily with one hand - the Hostess products (Twinkie, Ding Dong, Ho Ho, Little Debbie, etc.), donuts, Jaffa cakes, Moon Pies... though generally speaking, only children can tolerate their ghastly sugariness and artificiality.

The secret to Twinkies and some of the other snack-sized cakes is that the "cake" part has properties somewhere in the magic region among chiffon (light, airy, slightly chewy from lots of egg protein), sponge (chewy, sugary), and pound cake (dense, rich, crumbly). The resulting cake has enough coherence to hold in the hand, sufficient toughness that it can be filled without breaking, and a melting quality in the mouth. These qualities are achieved with a chemist's toolbox of stabilizers and processed ingredients that aren't used in artisan baking.

The actual components of a cupcake don't lend themselves well to build something you can hold in your hand and take bites of. The best-flavored fresh-baked cake batters are crumbly - rich in fats, lightly bound with protein, and just sugary enough to be hygroscopic (they both hold moisture and pull it back in from the air so they don't stale quickly). I've seen sponge-based and brownie-based cupcakes - both tend to be too heavy or chewy, and somewhat limit the flavor combinations you can use.

Cupcakes are made nearly as tall as they're wide in order to ensure uniform baking (no crispy or wet parts) and retard staling - a near-sphere has less surface area. Unfortunately, that also creates the complained-of difficulties in eating one-handed, and getting the right frosting/cake proportions. [Let us not speak of the abomination which is commonly referred to as a "cake pop".]

Frostings and icings have their own awkwardnesses. Commercial bakeries often use shortening, which is cheap and keeps longer than natural fats. Shortening has a melting point above body temperature, leaving your mouth greasy and encapsulating the sugars so much that you need extra sugar to get the first hit of sweet taste, which then leaves a sugary grittiness. Shortening-based frostings are very stiff, sculptable, and take color easily, so your fancily decorated pretty cupcake may actually taste disgusting.

Butter-based frostings are exquisitely sensitive to temperature and humidity, but have a light, ethereal sweetness and smoothness that complements the cake. The nice, crisp decorating twirls and twizzles drawn in buttercream have a shelf-life of about a day... if you don't carry them in a hot car for 10 minutes. 100% buttercream is best for on-premises consumption at premium prices.

So the usual happy medium that pro cake shops use is 50/50 butter and shortening. This still has a tendency to weep if kept too long or too cold (the liquid/fat emulsion starts to break down), but mostly avoids greasiness and tastes not-too-overpoweringly sweet.

Now, we've already heard from the cream-cheese haters in the audience. The sad fact is that many commercial cream cheese frostings use shortening instead of butter to loosen the protein matrix, with the problems noted above. A proper cream cheese frosting complements many flavors (I've got a fantastic burnt caramel cream cheese frosting recipe), is beaten to airiness, and has just enough acidity that it balances sweetness. It's also got exactly enough viscosity and proper hardness (you thought I was joking about the engineering part?) to make a good filling without crumbling the cupcake.

The alternatives, icing (usually water and icing sugar with little fat) and ganache-type, are easier to produce consistently, but have their own problems with overpowering sweetness or difficulty in decorating/flavoring.

That gets into the question of the right proportions - how much frosting and cake should be in every bite? There are a variety of mostly unsatisfactory approaches to getting frosting/filling anywhere but on top - scooping, coring, injecting. What comes out the end with standard cupcake batters is often wet, stiff or crumbly. If you are very particular about getting exact amounts of frosting with each bite, use a spoon.

To fill or not to fill: I personally loved marshmallow, jam, fruit curd, or ganache as fillings, but each has its own particular storage and handling requirements, as well as that cupcake fragility problem. Marshmallow has those ideal viscosity/hardness properties, but is very sweet and can pull moisture from the cake. Jams/curds add water - you don't want the cake to get soggy. Ganache - you store the item below room temperature, you wind up with a waxy lump in the middle of your cupcake that demolishes it like a wrecking ball as you try to eat.

Thus endeth today's sermon.

This was a fun read, thanks for sharing!

Personally, I'm always torn between the beauty and the practicality (taste) of the icing to cake ratio.

I don't like frosting, but I love vanilla cakes. I think any amount of frosting is to much ratio wise, but I have only had that sugary store bought kind. I'll take a fresh baked cake with no frosting any day. Fun read.