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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To be fed up to the back teeth with CUPCAKES

216 replies

HengshanRoad · 06/05/2011 06:45

Stupid, pathetic, too-sweet, overrated, overpriced fucking CUPCAKES.

They're everywhere. Apparently "whoopee pies" were supposed to overtake them, but that hasn't happened.

Why is a "cupcake business" the activity of choice for women these days? And why do said businesses always have such twee names?

Jenny Colgan's new book is even devoted to the blighters.

Probably been done to death already, but I needed to vent.

OP posts:
BanalChelping · 06/05/2011 12:55

Well I think the lesson in the DM article is to put money aside for your tax bill (it's not like you don't get one every year) and don't spunk £800 a shot on fucking jeans! Interesting that her house was saved by her cupcakes and a loan from her mother.

SoFluffyImGonnaDie · 06/05/2011 12:57

I do actually like buttercream icing on a cake but within reason and not too much icing to sponge ratio.
I can however see your cupcake and raise you a cuppicake, surprisingly I also have a fb friend who is littering my newsfeed with her new business and insists on calling them cuppicakes it makes my teeth itch!
I would call them fairy buns to be honest and I am most definitely a little northern.

BigBoats · 06/05/2011 12:59

at cuppicakes.

JenaiMarrHePlaysGuitar · 06/05/2011 12:59

And she spent £5k getting her car fixed!

Who in their right mind would do that if they really were up against it? £5k?!? [boggles]

MisSal if it were all true I'd thoroughly agree with you. But it's clearly utter bollocks. There was another story in the DM (found it when I was searching for the one Hazel found) that was far more inspiring.

Hang on I'll find it...

JenaiMarrHePlaysGuitar · 06/05/2011 13:01

Here

And her cakes look nicer, too.

MisSalLaneous · 06/05/2011 13:02

I'm not sure why I feel the need to defend this women - not my usual kind of friend really, the constant coffee shop / shopping set-up - but I don't think it matters that she got a loan from her mother. So yes, she was lucky that that was possible, but she still worked really hard to make it work. I got a loan to study, for example, but I still studied and worked really hard to get where I am now. I don't think it means her efforts were any less.

Completely agree with the tax bill though. Not exactly an unexpected expense.

LadyClariceCannockMonty · 06/05/2011 13:05

Like all things, there are good and bad cupcakes. But I love the good ones. Don't care if they're twee. Although not all of them are; some are quite chunky and macho.

MisSalLaneous · 06/05/2011 13:07

Sorry, cross posts there. Ok, fair enough if not completely true, but if it is, at least she tried hard.

But my word, that farmer's wife's cakes look good. Am drooling at top cake with strawberries. And yes, hers down to good old fashioned hard work only and not "glam" image. Truly inspiring, I agree.

JenaiMarrHePlaysGuitar · 06/05/2011 13:34

MisSal it does seem a bit mean spirited, I agree.

But the story is so dishonest; there is no way her cakes are paying for 4 lots of school fees. Unless they eat an awful lot of cakes in Surrey...

And yes farmer lady's cakes look bloody lovely. That strawberry one

Housemum · 06/05/2011 13:46

Cupcakes are the designer handbag of cakes - expensive, ludicrously embellished, overhyped by the media so you feel as if you ought to have it. Sod that, I make fairy cakes with a splodge of glace icing and sprinkles - taste better, and a fraction of the price!

Ditto "handmade" cards that are just cut and paste. It's like getting a clip-art birthday card, a random selection of pretty things that go together because you bought the kit. If you put some effort in, used bits of ribbon/buttons/paper from a stash you had at random and made it look stylish, I'm impressed. If you bought a kit - meh.

Nothing against craft, if it has some effort/creativity involved. I knit/cross-stitch. My friend makes beautiful felt decorations. Another friend makes personalised items for children - OK, the machine does the embroidery, but she makes the Christmas stockings/Easter baskets/gym bags herself.

Suncottage · 06/05/2011 14:01

Cupcakes seem to me to be one of life's bitterest disappointments. This started with me as a child. They looked okay until I bit into one, sweet sticky icing and a dry as dust tastless sponge.

It also reminds me of a toffee apple I had at a fair once. I bit into the toffee bit which cracked in a very satisfying and glass like way then my little teeth encountered a brown mush of an ancient apple.

The git that sold me that has never got out of my bastard box. I was only six and had to go to my special place to cry.

I want to see a huge plateful of bacon butties and chipolatas drizzled with brown sauce.

BibiBelle · 06/05/2011 14:01

Jesus wept there are some people on here with some anger issues over a cake?!?!

animula · 06/05/2011 14:06

Suncottage - You are so right about toffee apples!

I, too, remember the terrible disappointment of my first toffee apple. We went to the fair, and it was dark, filled with whirling lights, and noise, and I sensed that chaos and excitement were close twins, and it was thrilling and slightly frightening. and in this sense of adventure, I whined and whined for a toffee apple, and my mother said I wouldn't like it, and I thought "What do you know?" And she bought me one ... and it was utterly crap.

I think the experience flavoured my take on life. They should be banned. Along with cupcakes.

I am revising my opinion that they are a sop to the essentially diseases of the soul brought about by the vampiric qualities of late industrial capitalism - now I think they are small, homeopathic doses of disappointment, intended to kill your spirit and longing for a utopic world of realised untrammelled joy.

MisSalLaneous · 06/05/2011 14:12

Talking of taste disappointments: The first time I put a whole spoon of vanilla essence in my mouth. Hurriedly, as my mom wouldn't give me some when I asked. I loved the smell and adding it to home-made milkshake, so suspected it was another "this chocolate isn't nice" trick. Mistake. Big mistake.

Suncottage · 06/05/2011 14:16

Animula

We need to get together and talk about this. Scarred I am SCARRED. Why would anyone do that to an innocent child?

Anyone else want to join the Bitter Disappointment of the Crap Toffee Apple at a Tender Age Support Group?

We shall meet on Friday at 1pm. Anyone found with a cake tin about their person will be given a wedgie and warned not to walk the streets after dark alone EVER again.

BanalChelping · 06/05/2011 14:18

Now Diane the farmer's wife's cakes look marvellous. She's Cumbrian too, can't go wrong Grin

working9while5 · 06/05/2011 14:36

AbsDuCroissant, we had home ec in Ireland too.. and I was rubbish at everything but cooking. Now I am a wee bit sorry I didn't pay more attention to sewing as it would be ever so much cheaper to be able to make do and mend. But the boys should have had to do it too

MillyR · 06/05/2011 14:45

I'm surprised by how many people on here have admitted to making those highly decorated versions of buns. My workplace is awash with them, but always made by young women with no kids.

BibiBelle · 06/05/2011 14:46

MillyR - needs must and when people keep asking. I'd rather make cakes than be unemployed and on the dole

MillyR · 06/05/2011 14:49

BB, well I'll try and keep down the amateurs in my workplace so that you can boost your business, but they are scarily determined to bring out cupcakes without warning!

BibiBelle · 06/05/2011 14:51

MllyR to be fair I'd rather be doing big cakes or brownies - much easier and more satisfying imo but time and time again people want them Hmm I don't charge through the nose though and all my ingredients are fresh/seasonal and local where possible. Maybe that helps??

AbsDuCroissant · 06/05/2011 14:54

Agree working. The boys did woodwork and technical drawing (whatever the hell that is - I think it was being able to draft designs for bridges and stuff). Both should have had home ec AND woodwork etc. None of my male friends know how to sew anything, not a button, which is pretty horrific (but I plan on taking advantage of this and charing them £5 a go to do it for them Grin)

moonbells · 06/05/2011 14:56

I think they're overpriced. When I was little, you used to be able to get six 'cupcakes' in a box which had dead flat, poured icing over boring sponge, which was either lemon or lime. Didn't like those either... Do make chocolate muffins occasionally.

Now home-made ice cream OTOH...

MillyR · 06/05/2011 14:57

BB, I just think you should be proud of yourself for having a business making cakes of any kind! And you can only sell what people want.

I just get bored by the competitive baking of small pink cakes covered in glitter that goes on in my work place. After 5 years, I cannot be bothered to enthuse. There is even now a bit of news about this cupcake baking on our website news page (and we are in no way in a field connected to cake making).

BibiBelle · 06/05/2011 15:00

Thanks MillyR. I couldn't be further from baking if I tried! It is however a very good area to take in experiments!! I baked for years donating it to local community cafes and then last year, to distract from a MC, my friend asked me to do cakes for an event she was hosting. Orders poured in from there, still to my amazement! I'm having to rein it all in a touch and learn to say no. My DC are still small and it takes up a lot of time.