Why We Love Cupcakes

I have had Cupcakes on the brain recently.  1st I interviewed at a cupcake speciality location yesterday, and then last night after dinner, a friend of mine went to seek out dessert and stumbled upon the same chain and stopped to pick up cupcakes.

We decided on three overly decadent, disgustingly sweet, pretty little concoctions, got them to go and headed back to his place to eat them.  In the midst of this conversation, I figured out why everyone loves cupcakes.

Yes, they are pretty, or cute, but so is a regular cake.  Yes, they are convenient, but most of the time you put them on a plate and eat them similar to a regular cake.  No no no, these are not the reasons for the mass cupcake love.  The real reason is that we don't like sharing.  Sure, we will donate money to causes, and we will give half our sandwich away, but a cupcake is different.  Perhaps it's because it's wrapped in wax paper, or maybe because it's a complete decoration on top as opposed to part of a picture, either way, cupcakes give us permission not to share.

I distinctly remember feeling this way when I was a selfish only-child in preschool.  Whenever it was blueberry muffin day, I loved the fact that I got a whole muffin to myself, and it was just mine.  Well, it's 18 years later, and I think I still love the fact that with a cupcake, you can be as selfish as you want.  And when you buy a cupcake, you get to pick your flavor, instead of being left with chocolate cake and chocolate frosting, like every other kid in the third grade.

Perhaps that's why cupcakes have caught on so much in NYC.  With our constant sharing of personal space, we need something to let us escape and that we feel ok about not sharing.  And hey, it being NYC, we will just walk off the calories on the way home from the subway.

I have a new goal in life, to make the entire Nintendo series of games into cupcakes.