Cupcake metastasis

Display at Eleni's Cookies in Chelsea Market, originally uploaded by k10_.

New Year's Eve, a time for profound reflection.

Like, what the #!%? happened to NYC's cupcakes?

Watching the evolution of NYC cupcakes has been quite interesting, from a systems perspective. The cupcake fad began with normal proportioned cakes and a sense of a styled upgrade on a comforting childhood cliche. Now it's a heap of sugary junk.

For example, I just got back from Chelsea Market, where the cupcake bakeries are chock full of the stuff pictured above: mounds of icing and sprinkles and candy and oreos and other gloop piled on a relatively routine (i.e., extra-sugary) cupcake base.

You can probably chart the feedback loop yourself, as Sex and the City + the spread of the haute urban fad to mass market hubs favors the emergence of cupcakes that are cheap, standardized, big and gimmicky.

Basically, the red tide of dessert.