Sweetness

I succumbed to terrible weakness yesterday – bought bakery cupcakes. We’ve been missing the ‘opportunity’ to bake and have sweet goodies, not because we always HAVE them, but because we always COULD have them, if we wanted them, but now, in our makeshift kitchen, we really can’t. (Did that make sense? Do I sound like Carol Bartz from Autodesk? See yesterday’s posting…) While dessert isn’t usually on our evening menu, the fact that it really can’t be is bugging us. (Well, me, anyway.)

So I bought cupcakes. Frosted cupcakes. Heavily frosted cupcakes, actually.

And this brought me to wondering about Sweetness and its relative loss in the sophisticated 21st century palate. My bakery cupcakes were frosted with the old fashioned ‘bakery icing’ that I’ve always loved; the kind that is so sweet it almost makes your teeth hurt. Wonderful stuff. You don’t get that very much any more. Now you are most likely to get something that is whipped cream with a little bit of sweetener in it – hardly able to stand up to the cupcake.

For me, the sweeter, the better.

I’m terribly outdated from the food trends of the decade. Read today’s restaurant dessert menu and you are likely to find description of desserts that celebrate their lack of sweetness. Magazine recipes focus on custardy, fruity things. Wedding cakes seem to be specifically designed not to be sweet. I fear for our future.

What is wrong with these people?