Friday, October 28, 2011

I was a teenage monster

John has a joke he sometimes tells that goes something like this: One day Noah's son Shem came up to him and said, "Dad--there's a pair of snakes that hasn't multiplied at all! It's still just the two of them." "Okay," said Noah. "I'll go have a talk with them." A few days later Shem was checking on the animals again, and he noticed those same two snakes, only this time they had tons and tons of little baby snakes, slithering all over this piece of wooden furniture with four legs and a flat top. Shem ran up to Noah and said, "What's going on? Why weren't those snakes multiplying, and why are there so many of them now?" Noah said, "Well, they were adders. So I built them a log table."


That is a math joke that I don't even understand. I probably didn't even tell it right.

A post that Tori has up about the salted caramel trend (that is good and righteous, but unfortunately about to become a victim of its own success) reminded me how much I hate cupcakes, and how ready I am for them to be over, and how there are people who don't realize that the trend has spent itself who are still starting cupcake businesses, and although cupcake shops may continue to make money for a while, especially in places like Utah where we're a good 1-5 years behind on food trends, the cupcake thing has peaked and is going into its twilight years. Cupcakeries better start some smart diversification and line extension. Pies are the next wave, and I'm not sure what's coming after that. Let me think about it for a while. Welcome the pie, is what I say. I'd love to see a pie shop that makes an edible pie. Heck, I'd like to start one--note to Huffs: let's have that be a sister business of our set-menu restaurant.

As Tori implies in her post heading, it's the same thing with bacon. I don't think bacon will see as vituperative a backlash as I foresee for cupcakes, because it is such a worthy foodstuff, but we all need to settle down about bacon. Sometimes there isn't enough fat on the bacon, and those times make me irritated. Tipsy has a great bit about bacon in her book--I'll go find it so I don't butcher it in the retelling.

Here we go:

At some point in the last few years, bacon became everyone's naughty best friend. Even vegetarians love bacon. Dieters love bacon! There's a bacon-of-the-month club and I went to a trendy restaurant where cake was served topped with candied bacon. It was insanely delicious and also insane. People wear T-shirts silkscreened with strips of bacon and get tattoos of pigs on their biceps. Bacon, bacon, bacon, enough with the bacon. I feel about bacon the way I do about Tina Fey. Sometimes I get sick of the adulation and want to dislike bacon. Except, of course, I can't. It's bacon.

--Jennifer Reese, from "Make the Bread, Buy the Butter"

This is truth. Do you see why you need her book?

Anyway, like I was saying. Shut up, cupcakes. You are stupid and always have been because you wreck the 2:1 frosting to cake ratio. Shut up, cake balls and pops. You are moist and delicious, but you are a trophy wife.

I have it! The next trend should be old-fashioned doughnuts. Not raised doughnuts, cake doughnuts.

What food trends do you want to go away? What food trends do you love or want to see? Am I off-base about the cupcakes and cake balls/pops? Do you like fatty or meaty bacon?


All8 said...

I surely hope that it's not cake doughnuts, ugh. The mealy, greasy, dryness of it all. Yuck. Raised doughnuts All The Way. Ah, Bacon, everyone Loves bacon, except my 7 yr old, but she doesn't count because her taste buds aren't suitably refined, yet.

I'd like to think that I'm mostly immune to food trends, just as well as I am to fashion trends. I eat what I eat because I like it and I wear what I wear because I like it. (Although, heels are just about to put my knee out and I'll end up in granny shoes sooner than necessary. ARGH the inhumanity of it all.) I think that people are just repeating what has already been done, there's nothing new and it all will come and go (over and over) just like Neon and hip huggers. Don't sweat it.

Jenny said...

I would way rather eat a cake ball over a cupcake. We went to this cupcake shop in Seattle that my friends raved over and I really didn't think it was anything special. I have yet to try a store bought cupcake that isn't way too dry and crumbly and the frosting is way too sweet. We did, however, go to the most amazing bakery (Bakery Noveau) and had the best ham and cheese croissants- I've never had anything like that's a great idea!

tipsybaker said...

Old fashioned donuts. Love. And French crullers. Whenever I go into a donut shop with my family I say, I won't have a donut unless there's a French cruller.
Now I have to read about salted caramel.

Tori said...

We really did have tempura bacon as an appetizer. Our meal was perfectly book-ended by overwrought food trends.

I'm not sure I can get behind the cake doughnut thing. And didn't we kind of do doughnuts already with the Krispy Kreme renaissance?

I want to know which cupcake shop Jenny went to. My money's on Cupcake Royale. If you said Trophy I would be shocked. Almost as shocked as I am that the Seattle Metro area can support four cupcake chains a full five years after I thought cupcakes were over and done.