{penguins and parentheses}: Wellingtons are the new Cupcakes

The Kitchn recently blogged about whether doughnuts are the new cupcake? It is starting to look like a distinct possibility. And if it is, I am definitely in the queue for these beautiful ones...

Pictures: Cannelle et Vanille

Everything old and obscure eventually comes back into fashion. Something goes from being unknown, underground, unfashionable or unremembered to being EVERYWHERE. This is great if it's something that you didn't know about before (for me, the sushi trend some - eeep! - 10 years ago was one of those), and less than great if it's something you already liked. Now, I don't think I'm so bolshie as to like lots of things just because they aren't mass market*, but ubiquity takes away the enjoyment.
This is because:

There's enjoyment in tracking something down from somewhere specific, and planning a special expedition to go and get it. If there's one on every corner, it just ain't the same.
The originals really were the best. And then it's a case of whether one good cupcake is preferable to a towering array of middling, average and mediocre cupcakes (all the more so if a sudden proliferation of cupcake places drives the one I actually liked out of business).
There are other associations, and some of them are dodgy! So, cupcakes go from being simply tasty, attractive, easy to make and delicate, to a giant muffin of a thing with a soft serve swirl of buttercream (what on earth happened to glace icing?), printed on tee shirts and becoming part of a the vocabulary of pink-girlie-Disney-princess-ish-ness that grows like algae on a pond (harrumph).

I suspect there may be a few ramblings coming on things that used to be lovely and obscure, and suddenly have become Part Of The Zeigeist**

* Lots of things, that is. Liking some things to be different and for the hell of it is another matter. It's all about keeping the bolshie cow down to a dull moo... Unless it's wedding related. Then it's a whole other bag of ferrets...

** Which makes me think that the same thing happens with words, and that is definitely a whole other episode for a later date. Paradigm, anybody?