Heralded by a large poster in the window: the spaghetti-and-meatball cupcake from a rather unsatisfying aerial perspective, looking more like fantastically blodshot eyeballs.
In a mature market, the number of varieties of a certain product must multiply in order to maintain profits. So goes the mantra of the undergrad marketing major.
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Such has certainly been the case with the cupcake market. It started out slow and built gradually until Sex and the City gave it a swift kick in the ass, and now it’s been Go-Go-Go Cupcakes! ever since. Individual bakeries developed branches, new brands popped up in competition, entire bakeries arose in search of perfect gluten-free cupcakes, august commercial restaurateurs become involved, and new cupcake ideas developed as surely as the gestation of rodents deep beneath the pavement.
Recently, Fork in the Road reported that a male-oriented cupcake had been invented, leading us to speculate if the original cupcake was indeed feminine, or functionally neuter. Then along came the cartoon-personality cupcake aimed at kids, and the cupcake-that-impersonated-another-foodstuff, of which the hamburger cupcake (above) was the surest and most hilarious example.
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The spaghetti-and-meatball cupcake wants to be your next meal.
Now Ruthy’s Bakery in Chelsea Market has come up with a new twist on the food-simulacrum cupcake front. Their stock-in-trade has long been making cupcakes with likenesses of cartoon characters aimed, presumably, at kids. The spaghetti-and-meatballs cupcake is more baffling. The frosting is extruded as a tangled skein of spaghetti, looking oddly real. On top of that sits a single meat ball, looking bloody but unbowed in its tomato sauce. But what does it mean?