Cupcake Queen

Lemon Butterfly cupcake: the cupcake for February 20, 2009, according to the cupcake-a-day calendar I gave my roommate for her birthday.

Vanilla Dream: the signature cupcake from the “Hey Cupcake!” cupcake truck I encountered on the side of the road in Austin, Texas over intersession.

Vegan Chocolate Chip cupcake with mini Obama flag: the cupcake I ate most recently—from Kickass Cupcakes in Davis Square on the day of my last final.

Chocolate cupcakes baked in ice cream cones: the cupcakes my blockmates baked for my 21st birthday.

Cupcake04: my first ever AOL screen name, based on the brilliance of my fifth-grade mind.

I like to think of myself as a cupcake connoisseur. Those childhood delicacies that perk you up with one look at their frosting mound and colorful details. I don’t remember the first time I ate a cupcake as a child (but I can remember how I always ate them—cake bottom first to save the three-inch frosting top for last). And I can’t claim a favorite flavor. But, as a second-semester senior, I proudly declare that my life revolves around cupcakes.

My obsession with cupcakes has been growing over time, slowly creeping up on me almost unconsciously. I have always been a muffin snob, eating only the banana chocolate chip muffins from the bakery near my house and engaging in a “muffin exchange” with high school and college friends to search for the moistest muffin. But a stronger and deeper love for cupcakes that trumped any affection for muffins? That was less readily apparent.

The acknowledgement of my addiction came slowly: noticing friends poking fun at me for choosing Finale’s chocolate cupcake with cream cheese frosting rather than Felipe’s burritos as a late-night snack; giving cupcakes as pick-me-ups to friends the night before their finals; and realizing I had integrated a discussion of cupcakes into otherwise unrelated conversations. Witnessing withdrawal symptoms when forced to replace cupcakes with French pastries during my junior fall abroad in France.

And then, I embraced the obsession.

As one of the countless Harvard undergraduates living in New York last summer, I leapt at the chance to leave my Midwestern roots and live in the country’s most populous city. But beyond the world-famous museums, endless crowds, and innumerable clubs, Manhattan became my cupcake haven. When friends came to visit, I unknowingly turned our tour of the city into a cupcake walking tour.

Interested in eating brunch near the Upper West Side? I would transform this into a tasting tour of the petite cupcakes of Magnolia Bakery at Columbus and 69th, the overpowering cupcakes of Crumbs at Amsterdam and 75th, the cream-filled cupcakes of Alice’s Tea Cup at Columbus and 73rd, and the pastel-colored cupcakes of Buttercup Bake Shop at Columbus and 72nd (the tour could have continued, but our stomachs always seemed to be full and wallets empty after these almost-$4-each extravagances). When the Crumbs Bake Shop on Wall Street near my apartment would close by 8 p.m., my friends and I would instead venture to the Dessert Truck that parked itself along the same street until 2 a.m. each evening that summer.

I also found solace in recognizing that I was not alone in my obsession. Carrie Bradshaw and “Sex and the City” brought high-society glamour to cupcakes when the show featured them in 2000. Back in 2003, The New York Times wrote articles touting the “swelling trend in cupcakes.” And even my hometown of Chicago repeatedly boasts “cupcake crawls” of the city. But negative attention has also come to these confections. Cupcakes have even become a symbol for controversy over the past few years, embodying the “the cupcake problem” of too much sugar served in middle schools, according to one professor of nutrition at New York University.

While many summer Dessert Truck quests ended in failure and countless cupcake tastings resulted in comments about the cupcake being “uninspired,” I always cherished the search. The perfect cupcake is not simply a taste, but also an act. You may sometimes come upon the cupcake with the perfect ratio of frosting to cake bottom, while many other times you are left with the untouched sand-tasting cupcake from the Kosher birthday party. And once in a while, you are left wondering how a brown sugar cupcake with bacon bits could ever taste good.

Here’s to hoping the economy will leave the cupcake business untouched and at its sugary best. If it doesn’t, we can always indulge in the basic chocolate Hostess Cup Cake, extravagant frosting not included.