{"id":743,"date":"2013-12-05T11:25:18","date_gmt":"2013-12-05T09:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=743"},"modified":"2013-12-05T11:25:18","modified_gmt":"2013-12-05T09:25:18","slug":"muffins-and-cupcakes-the-invasion-of-united-states-bakery-with-a-plea-for-cosmopolitan-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2013\/12\/05\/muffins-and-cupcakes-the-invasion-of-united-states-bakery-with-a-plea-for-cosmopolitan-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"MUFFINS AND CUPCAKES: THE INVASION OF UNITED STATES BAKERY (WITH A PLEA FOR COSMOPOLITAN RESISTANCE) <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jaime: This one is for you…<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure you have noticed the relentless advance of US-inspired bakery in our cities and towns, aided by diverse TV shows (currently, for instance, Cupcake Wars<\/em> on Divinity). This invasion of muffins, cupcakes and an endless variety of decorated cakes has been quite fast and, as it happens with fashions that take on very quickly, it seems to have left us with the impression that American bakery is already part of our local Spanish culture. Well, it is not, though I assume it is here to stay.<\/p>\n

Reconstructing the history of this recent cultural import is by no means easy. (In case you have been on planet Mars in the last decade, you can take a basic tutorial from \u201cMagdalenas, Muffins y Cupcakes: Diferencias\u201d at http:\/\/denikatessen.blogspot.com.es\/2013\/05\/magdalenas-muffins-diferencias.html<\/a>). To satisfy my own curiosity I did a Google search limited by year, beginning in 1996, and although I do know that this is not 100% realiable, the results seem to make a certain sense. Let\u2019s start with the muffins, then move onto the cupcakes. <\/p>\n

Muffins seems to be a McDonald\u2019s import, at least this is what a question formulated back on 1\/02\/2001 in the website El Pregunt\u00f3n (www.ruper.net\/El%20Pregunton.htm\u200e<\/a>) suggests: \u201c\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 en el McDonald las magdalenas se llaman Muffins y no McDalenas?\u201d The first references to \u2018muffins\u2019 I\u2019ve come across go back actually to 2000: an early recipe for honey muffins (10\/03\/2000, http:\/\/jgmoyay.apagada.com\/recetas.htm#38<\/a>), and an article on polidextrose (02\/02\/2000, www.espatentes.com\/pdf\/2207816_t3.pdf\u200e<\/a>) in which the author considers s\/he needs to explain that muffins are \u201cbollos o bizcochos similares a la magdalena.\u201d So… the next step would perhaps ask McDonalds Spain… Funnily, I was under the impression that Starbucks was responsible for the popularisation of muffins, but it landed in Spain in 2002 when McDonalds was already offering muffins \u2013or so it seems. <\/p>\n

Now \u2013cupcakes. This is complicated… and for a very peculiar reason it\u2019s easy to detect plenty of rivalry regarding claims as to who opened the first cupcake establishment in Spain. I\u2019ll stake the totally unproven claim that cupcakes were introduced in Spain in 1994, when the first Taste of America shop opened (http:\/\/www.tasteofamerica.es\/historia<\/a>). At least I\u2019m reasonably sure that they must have sold already products to bake cupcakes at home. Now, I\u2019ve found at least three likely contenders for the title of first Spanish bakery especialising in American cupcakes: 1) Acaramelada in Madrid (it seems to have opened in November 2000), offering \u201creposter\u00eda creativa\u201d (the finished product, courses, materials); 2) Patricia Arrib\u00e1lzaga\u2019s shop (http:\/\/www.tartasdecoradasycupcakes.com<\/a>\/), which opened in 2001 and specialised in \u2018designer cupcakes\u2019; 3) and Golden Cupcake (http:\/\/goldencupcake.com<\/a>), from Le\u00f3n, which announce themselves as \u201cla primera franquicia de reposter\u00eda creativa\u201d though I should contact them to find out when they started. By the way, the most popular blog in this area seems to be \u201cEl rinc\u00f3n de Bea\u201d (http:\/\/www.elrincondebea.com<\/a>\/), since 2008.<\/p>\n

You may have heard something about cupcakes and the TV series Sex and the City<\/em>. Yes, correct: Mikel L\u00f3pez Iturriaga explains that \u201cCarrie y sus amigas no s\u00f3lo ense\u00f1aron a las americanas que los cupcakes eran cool y te curaban de cualquier tipo de desencuentro con la vida, sino que les hizo vivir la fantas\u00eda de que no engordaban.\u201d (\u201cTodo lo que debes saber sobre los ‘cupcakes’\u201d, 21\/07\/2010, http:\/\/blogs.elpais.com\/el-comidista\/2010\/07\/moda-cupcakes-magdalenas.html<\/a>). In particular, Carrie and her posh friends were the clients of Magnolia Bakery (http:\/\/www.magnoliabakery.com<\/a>\/). Now, Sexo en Nueva York<\/em> was first broadcast in Spain by the subscription channel Cosmopolitan in 2000. It seems, then, quite likely that cupcakes, introduced more or less by then, actually came to Spain on the personal initiative of travellers who discovered in situ<\/em> American bakery. The series may have just confirmed the popularity of cupcakes among middle- and upper-class urban women.<\/p>\n

Personally, I don\u2019t like very much neither muffins nor cupcakes \u2013too rich, too cloying. I\u2019m not going to defend \u2018magdalenas\u2019 here, which, ironically, are also a cultural import, this time from French baking culture. I simply like much better the very fine local patisserie in Barcelona (think Farga), which seems to me much more elegant in texture and flavour than the US-inspired bakery. As I\u2019m sure you are noticing, I feel actually quite annoyed by this American import because it seems to be yet another colonial surrender to a culture that has already overwhelmed us in excess. <\/p>\n

In contrast, I\u2019ll defend the cosmopolitan virtues of another cultural import to Barcelona: the patisseri Ochiai with its Japanese specialities (http:\/\/www.ochiaipastisseria.com<\/a>\/). This is run by Takashi Okiai since 1983 (he\u2019s one of those \u2018romantic\u2019 migrants few studies of migration seem to notice). One of his star products is the \u2018dorayaki,\u2019 \u201c\u0430 red bean pancake which consists of two small pancake-like patties made from castella wrapped around a filling of sweet Azuki red bean paste\u201d (Wikipedia explains). All Catalan kids know about \u2018dorayaki\u2019 because it\u2019s what the space cat Doraemon eats in the eponynous cartoon TV series. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s, as you can see, a great difference between the cosmopolitanism of cultural variety (= the dorayaki) and the invasion backed by US imperialist cultural colonisation (= the muffins and cupcakes).<\/p>\n

This post, by the way, is 100% Cultural Studies… I\u2019ll let in other hands the continuation of the work started here, you\u2019re very welcome. It\u2019s been fun!!<\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them first for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. If you like my blog, you can subscribe using the RSS feed (right-hand column, below Blogroll.) You\u2019ll get an email message for every new post. VISIT MY WEB: http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jaime: This one is for you… I\u2019m sure you have noticed the relentless advance of US-inspired bakery in our cities and towns, aided by diverse TV shows (currently, for instance, Cupcake Wars on Divinity). This invasion of muffins, cupcakes and an endless variety of decorated cakes has been quite fast and, as it happens with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}