Along with the added convenience of keeping in touch and stalking your friends, Facebook has allowed individuals to launch home-based businesses. Online groups for personalised greeting cards, flowers, baked treats and apparel are popping up all over the social networking website.
The most successful of these ventures is the baking business; who wouldn’t click on a picture of a delicious cupcake? Many of these businesses have emerged, and why not? It’s free to start a fan page and cheap to advertise.
Cut-throat baking gurus
Do not be fooled by the cute baby bottles and delicate flower decorations. The baking business is ruthless. Competitors send their friends to check out other pages and point out flaws. Everyone one keeps tabs on each other in order to outdo rivals with special offers. The cupcake wars may have been silent two years ago but now they have captured the media’s attention and more icing will be spilled.
So how exactly do these women compete with each other? They try to make the most eye-catching designs available, of course. You can order a cake that looks like a Birkin bag and even a cupcake with a 3D teddy bear on it. This is all thanks to the material fondant, a form of icing that can be molded like clay. There is no doubt that these pieces are works of art but my question is: do you really want to eat them?
Not as yummy as they look
When I pass by a bakery in New York, I ogle the Red Velvet cupcakes in the window because the butter cream frosting triggers my memory and I remember a taste from the past. But can one do that with a marzipan lookalike of a car? In rare cases I feel like the taste has been sacrificed for the design. Entrepreneurs have offered such wonderful products and have created loyal fan bases, but I would like to see some more old fashioned cupcakes amped up, perhaps bigger and less laden with icing.
Perhaps I’m simply living in a dream world where the icing is just an afterthought and cupcakes are just cupcakes.
The views expressed by the writer and the reader comments do not necassarily reflect the views and policies of the Express Tribune.
The Cakery’s red velvet cupcakes! 😀 And Basma Azfar’s mint chocolate ones! If only the whole world was made of cupcakes!
I have to admit to having a sweet tooth, cupcakes, shupcakes you name it, I never refuse.
On this subject you have to concede that the smell and the taste of freshly baked bread especially early in the morning coming from a corner local bakery which only does breads is truly something.
Now I Feel Hungry! X(
I agree. Most of the cupcakes taste really bad. I ordered the cupcakes by cookie and although they were pretty they tasted quite awful
I ordered cupcakes from Cakeoholic, which I found on facebook, and loved the product. It was exactly what i wanted.
I owe facebook many thanks for introducing me to my favorite fb page, FOODILCIOUS…
i agree with u fondant is not tasty at all……….
i usually take oiff all the icing then eat the cup cake.