There was a point, sometime in the early 2000s, when cupcakes made the transition from a dessert to the dessert. No one is quite sure how it happened, or when, exactly—these things are difficult to track with accuracy—but it had something to do with the slowing of the economy and the rising of Magnolia Bakery, with the continued ascendance of gendered foods and the sudden influence of Sex and the City and Americans' collective devotion to reality television and their collective frustration with the Atkins diet. The simple, decorative treat—a highly adaptable combination of cake and frosting, presented in a single-serving if not a bite-sized form—was, suddenly, everywhere. And then it followed the trajectory that all trends will, in the end: innovation to ubiquity to cliche.
The descent was quick. Crumbs, the cupcake-only chain, closed. The obituaries for the cupcake-as-the-dessert came rolling in. And, in short order—food trends, like nature itself, abhorring a vacuum—a successor was sought. Would America's next Default Dessert be the pie? Would it be the whoopie pie? Would it be the donut? Would it be—oh, but please let it not be—the cronut?
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