Table For One

Nothing speaks to both the potential romance and heartbreak of Valentine’s Day like a cupcake. Cupcakes make the perfect lovers—equal parts pleasurable and nostalgic, self-contained, portable even, and certainly adorable. But it’s hard to say anything new about cupcakes, especially in New York, where a flavor preference or bakery indicates as much about someone’s style as the label behind their lapel.

Enter Karen Tack and Alan Richardson, whose book Hello, Cupcake! came out last spring. Tack has been in the food styling business for decades and Richardson has snapped photos for dozens of cookbooks and food magazines. The book is less of a cookbook than a craft guide—think sugar and spice meet the Ikea assembly manual. It’s totally fun and slightly brilliant. Two of the best feature food imitating other foods: The corn-on-the-cob cupcakes using jellybeans and the spaghetti-and-meatballs, where a piping bag (or a Ziploc bag with the corner cut off) creates perfectly long and loopy strands of pasta.

Both from Hello, Cupcake!

And in other crazy cupcakes news, just in time for Fashion Week check out this Chanel-inspired number. It’s only debatably a ‘cup’-cake, but it’s pocket-size and it looks delicious. Cookie also has a feature on cupcake junkies who eat treats for dinner, and Jamie Oliver offers a savory and  surprisingly delicious combination of butternut squash and cream cheese. And it’s all downhill from there: witness the root beer float cupcake, and the cereal-ingrained cupcake.

And the coup de gras, set to Amélie Poulain’s Valentine-evocative soundtrack, is the cupcake dance. How the stop motion creator managed not to eat them first is beyond me.