Cupcake creator or coffee shop owner or both? To me, these are careers that can include the best of two worlds, chocolate and hot tea. You couldn’t be a cupcake creator without chocolate somewhere and most coffee shops include hot tea on the menu. A raspberry-filled chocolate cupcake with a hot green tea latte with soy milk? Yum yum.
The origin of the cupcake can be traced back to 1796 in the cookbook, American Cookery by Amelia Simmons. The recipe called for “the cake to be baked in small cups.” The earliest documentation of the term cupcake was in “Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats” in 1828 in Eliza Leslie's Receipts cookbook.
Cupcakes have become more than a trend over the years; they've become an industry. Rachel Kramer Bussel, who has been blogging about cupcakes since 2004 at Cupcakes Take the Cake, said in 2010 that "in the last two years or so, cupcakes really exploded" with more cupcake-centric bakeries opening nationwide.
Cupcake Wars, a popular Food Network reality-based competition show, is currently in its sixth season. If you’ve ever considered being a cupcake creator or baker, this is the time.
Coffee shops or houses have been around even longer than cupcakes. A coffee house was reported open in Istanbul in 1555. During the seventeenth century, coffee appeared in Europe and triggered a flood of coffee houses. In the beginning, they were strictly for men and the site of political and social debate.
Coffee shops in the United States arose from the espresso- and pastry-centered Italian coffeehouses of the Italian American immigrant communities in the major U.S. cities. Coffee, music, and conversation were a mainstay in most coffee shops. Starting in 1967, Seattle became known for its thriving countercultural coffeehouse scene; the Starbucks chain later standardized and mainstreamed this espresso bar model.
Before 1990, true coffee houses were found only near colleges or artistic colonies. As with the cupcake, coffee houses are now a growing venue worthy of consideration for a career in ownership.
So we’re back to the question: Cupcake creator or coffee shop owner or both?
This week’s writing prompt: Celia stared at the bubbly froth covering her white chocolate caramel cappuccino and wondered why she ever…
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