by Amy Thomas
By 2009, dozens of bakeries vied for the title of Best Cupcake in New York. There were literally hundreds of flavors, sizes, and styles; they were sold with different philosophies, and sometimes even rules applied (no more than six cupcakes for you, missy!). Surely, the city could only stomach so much sugar? A cupcake crash was inevitable, though it took years longer than I ever expected.
It had been almost two months since I had arrived in Paris. I still hadn’t experienced a free-falling sugar crash, though I was beginning to feel a little schizophrenic. One minute, I’d be ecstatically doing the cha-cha in my tree house, and the next, I’d be cursing the six flights of stairs that kicked my ass to get up there. After a day of being unable to conceal my big American smile, someone would be rude to me and my chin would start trembling with hurt. Which led to doubt, which led to me feeling like a seven-year-old being ostracized on the playground, doomed never to fit in. I’d reprimand myself: Buck up! Get over it! You’re living your dream, you have no right to be sad or feel sorry for yourself!
But after a couple months away from home, my confidence was taking a beating in the face of so many changes and challenges. It was a salty-sweet mélange of excitement and dread. Bliss and dismay. Giddiness and loneliness. I had already gotten myself right back up from the ground after flying over the handlebars of a Vélib’ one time, but on a Saturday afternoon, after having fallen down the stairs of a boutique, horribly embarrassing myself, butchering my knee and, worst of all, ruining my brand new Robert Clergerie talons hauts, I limped home, confidence shattered along with tough-girl façade. I called AJ.
“Hello?” a very sleepy voice answered. I looked at my clock and only then did the math. Merde. It was 9:00 a.m. in New York.
“Hi. Did I wake you?”
“No, no,” AJ valiantly said from across the ocean. “Don’t worry about it. How are you?” I could hear her getting up. She never would have ignored a call from me. Even though I relied on her altruism, it still astounded me.
“Mmmm…I’m okay…” I found myself hedging, for some reason not wanting to say anything negative about Paris or my feeling vulnerable, even though it’s why I had called.
“Aim, hold on, just a sec, sorry.” I heard AJ covering the mouthpiece, followed by muffled conversation. Hmmmm…she wasn’t alone? I knew she had started dating someone right around the time I moved, but I’d be surprised if he was already spending the night. Come to think of it, she had been very mum about men lately, which, according to my knowledge of her dating behavior, developed from two-plus decades of experience, meant it was nothing serious. She would have been sharing blow-by-blow info if there was someone worth talking about. Turns out, I was wrong.
“Who was that?” I asked when she returned to the phone.
“Hold on,” and I heard the door click behind her. A moment later, she was revealing that it was Mitchell, the very same guy she started seeing when I moved to Paris—and they were indeed getting serious. In fact, they were all but inseparable.
I was, well, shell-shocked—which at least distracted me from my now-throbbing knee. I hadn’t even remembered this guy’s name, for crying out loud, and he was suddenly important in my best friend’s life? “So what makes him different? What have you guys been doing together? What’s the deal?” I asked quick-fire, as if I were interviewing her for an article.
“Well, he’s just pretty amazing, you know? He’s smart and edgy. He’s cool. And he’s from the Midwest, so we have a lot of shared values, which is becoming more important to me.” As AJ went on, I felt like I had entered a time warp. Wait a minute, I thought. In the time I’ve been trying to decipher my cable box in French, she’s met someone edgy and cool who she feels compatible with?
Sure, I was also having a love affair—with a city. But AJ was smitten with a man. I could hear it in her voice. And while I was happy for my best friend, I also started feeling sorry for myself. After weeks of exerting so much effort and trying so hard to acclimate, I was tired. Frustrated. Lonely and uncertain. I had Michael and was becoming friendly with another writer at Ogilvy, but these weren’t friends I could call in this vulnerable state and hash through my feelings over cocktails. A fierce wave of alienation nearly knocked me over when AJ and I hung up. What was I doing here? I looked around my tree house, which suddenly felt foreign. I needed a taste of home, I decided, no matter how small.
Right before my arrival in Paris, two sisters—Rebecca and Maggie Bellity—opened Cupcakes & Co. in the eleventh arrondissement. They had traveled throughout the States and been inspired by the cupcake trend that had spread across the country. When they returned to Paris in the fall of 2008, they set up what was then Paris’s sole cupcake bakery, making a name for themselves by not only featuring these funny little foreign treats, but also touting natural and organic ingredients, another hot foodie trend. As I coasted on a Vélib’ through the unfamiliar backstreets behind the Bastille, searching for this itty-bitty spot I had read about, I was filled with anticipation. Would their cupcakes be as good as those in the States?
When I arrived, the afternoon sun was spilling through the picture window onto the bakery’s one table. The space was tiny. The menu, however, was not. Choosing between five or ten cupcake flavors, the number most New York bakeries offered, was hard enough. But Cupcakes & Co. had over twenty varieties, and they all sounded heavenly: coffee and hazelnut, poppy seed with orange cream cheese frosting, vanilla bourbon cake with glazed figs and pine nuts. Miam, my new favorite word popped into my head—the French equivalent of yum.
I stood like a clueless American tourist, cross-referencing the descriptions on the chalkboard menu with the pretty creations in the display case. There were many unfamiliar words—fondant chocolat and ganache au beurre—which I filed away for future reference. Face scrunched in concentration, I tortured myself making this very important decision. While I knew a cupcake would momentarily transport me back to New York, the connection went deeper and further than that. It took me back to when I was an awkward third grader, alone in the world for the very first time.
I was eight when my parents got divorced and my mom shepherded me and my older brother, Chris, from our home in Hartford, Connecticut, to the shoreline where she grew up. When we left my neighborhood friends and our grand old house, I cried with heartache and disbelief. What would I do without my two best friends right next door? How could I live without the big Douglas fir outside my bedroom window? Who would make runs to the drugstore for strawberry Charleston Chews and nutty Whatchamacallits with me? Now when the yellow bus dropped me off from school, I had to unlock the front door of our raised ranch with my own key that I hyperconsciously carried in my front pocket. I was a latchkey kid. For the first time in my life, I was all alone.
But if the house was empty every day when I got home from school, at least the bread drawer was always full. Devil Dogs and Twinkies, Ho Hos and Chocodiles, Chips Ahoy and Nutter Butters, Oreos and Fudge Stripes, Scooter Pies and Pinwheels, Entenmann’s danishes and Pillsbury pastries, brownies and blondies, chocolate cake and carrot cake, Linzer torts and cherry pie, coffee cake and jelly doughnuts, jelly beans and licorice whips, Swedish fish and gummy worms, M&Ms and bridge mix, Kit Kats and Twix, ice cream and popsicles, Fruit Loops and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Pepperidge Farm and Keebler, Hostess and Drake’s, Mars and Cadbury…
All those years after the divorce, there was a Technicolor parade of sweets masquerading as my companions. How could I not cling to and love them? They never disappointed me. They had the magical power to console and cheer me up. They made life celebratory and fun. Especially a cream-filled Hostess CupCake.
Ripping open the cellophane package of those cupcakes was like unwrapping a little gift. It gave me a rapturous—albeit fleeting—diversion from my dull, empty life. With the lonesome shuffling between Mom and Dad, whom Chris and I visited every other weekend, I deserved those little treats, dammit! I focused first on the frosting, peeling the waxy layer off the cake in one sheaf, folding it
in half, and savoring the gritty-smooth texture when I bit into it. Then came the sugary implosion of the cake’s faux-cream center. I made each cupcake last for eight or nine delicious bites. Even though we always had sweets in the house, money was tight, and we were on a budget. If I were to devour the whole box of cupcakes, I would have nothing to look forward to the next day. Or the day after that. I knew to ration my Hostess CupCakes so I could always have a taste of comfort, even when money, attention, and hope were sparse.
To this day, a cupcake can make me feel like all is well in the world.
The longer I analyzed Cupcake & Co.’s menu, the more my taste buds perked up. Even better than feeling the cartwheels of anticipation in my belly, my spirits started lifting. Finally, I felt ready to make a decision: I chose the Scheherazade, an irresistible-sounding combination of pistachio cake with cream cheese frosting and a raspberry center, topped with a generous sprinkling of crushed pistachios and one perfect raspberry. I’ve always loved raspberries but since arriving in Paris had a newfound passion for pistachios, which were included in so many delectable desserts and pastries, either whole or ground with sugar into delicious marzipan.
Feeling conspicuous in the petite bakery, I thanked the lady and took my loot to the community park across the street. The square’s center was filled with planted shrubs and trees, so I chose one of the three narrow paths slicing through and traversed to the other side, where I sat on a slotted bench beneath a cherry blossom tree in full bloom. There was barely anyone sharing the park with me—just a heavy-set African woman reading the newspaper and an older gentleman in a tie, hooked up to an oxygen machine, just sitting, enjoying the day. I eyed my Parisian specimen. The lining was sturdier than those back home; more of a paper cup with a thick lip than a wrapper. But otherwise, with its fastidiously swirled frosting and sprinkling of pistachio pieces, it looked like it could have been from one of New York’s best bakeries. Here goes nothing, I thought.
I bit into my first Parisian cupcake. The cake was moist. The raspberry center was bright and jammy. The frosting was thick—not too much so—and savory more than sweet, the cream cheese adding just the right hint of sourness. I took a second bite and a third. It was an unforgivably delicious combination of flavors, textures, and surprises. Relief flooded me.
So there I was, alone again. But this time I was in Paris. I had come a long way from a lonely eight-year-old and a newbie New Yorker trying to find her way. I had so much to be grateful for and even more to look forward to. Nearly three decades after my love affair with cupcakes began, I sat deconstructing a small piece of cake, amazed that even now it could instill such peace, happiness, and a belief that everything was going to be okay.
More Sweet Spots on the Map
New Yorkers talk out of both sides of their mouths—even when they’re cramming them full of fist-sized bits of cake slathered in buttercream frosting. As “over” cupcakes as everyone purportedly is, you can still find them on practically every block. Beyond Magnolia, Buttercup, Billy’s, and Sugar Sweet Sunshine, which all have similar sugary repertoires, check out Butter Lane, The Spot, and Tu-Lu’s in the East Village; Out of the Kitchen and Sweet Revenge in the West Village; Babycakes on the Lower East Side; Baked by Melissa in Soho; Lulu in Chelsea; and Two Little Red Hens on the Upper East Side. Or just stand on a street corner and eventually they’ll come to you—cupcake trucks, like CupCake Stop, are also now prolific.
Is Paris far behind? It’s doubtful. The longer I was there, the more cupcakeries sprouted up like pretty springtime crocuses. In addition to Cupcakes & Co., there is Berko, an American-style French bakery with outposts in the tourist-friendly Marais and Montmartre quartiers, serving circus-like flavors such as banana and Nutella, tarte tatin, and Oreo. Across town in Saint-Germain, Synie’s Cupcakes takes the elegant route with chocolate ganache, lemon ginger, and dulce de leche with sea salt. Cupcakes are even infiltrating traditional boulangeries (such as the seventh arrondissement’s Moulin de la Vierge), gelaterias (Il Gelato in Saint-Germain), and Anglo-American eateries (H.A.N.D. in the 1er). Throwing a soirée or just feeling especially gluttonous? Batches of custom-order cupcakes are gladly supplied by Sugar Daze and Sweet Pea Baking, two American bakers who have been supplying Parisians with frosting-topped treats for years.
You wouldn’t know it from the hyperactive social life I’d left behind in New York, but I’ve always been a closet introvert. After my parents’ divorce, I spent so much time alone. If Chris and I weren’t parked on the couch, watching back-to-back episodes of The Brady Bunch or hours of Billy Idol, the Go-Go’s, and Bananarama videos on the new cable channel called MTV, then I’d lock myself in my room and focus on my new passions: journaling and writing poetry. I became good at withdrawing inside my head.
After years of being on the go in New York, I was once again relishing peace and solitude in Paris; I was having a relationship with me. I could binge on Top Chef for hours (and, all too frequently, did), cocoon myself in a warm café with a juicy novel, or take off on a Vélib’ for a pastry-sampling mission any time I wanted. Having so much freedom was almost as seductive as the city itself.
That said, after a couple months as a foreigner, with no post-work happy hours, no groups of girls gathered for cocktails, no delicious tête-à-têtes, no titillating first dates, and not being able to just let loose in a gush of words—in English—I was practically ready to explode with my unexpressed thoughts, observations, joys, and frustrations. I was hungry for conversation and companionship. When friends and family started making plans to visit me, I practically wept with relief.
I knew the upcoming girls weekend I was planning with AJ and our three other best friends was going to be brilliant. From the time of bad perms and acid-wash jeans, AJ, Julie, Elisa, and Meredith were my soul sisters. We had all graduated from the same high school two decades earlier. We’d been through first dates and heartbreaks, driver’s ed, and art history exams. When everyone scattered to different states for college, we sent each other off with teary good-byes and mixed tapes of Cat Stevens, Van Morrison, and the Indigo Girls. Many years and miles later, we were just as close—and just as cheesy.
Meredith, Julie, and Elisa were married with two kids. But, impressively, it didn’t stop them from saddling their husbands with child care duties for a long weekend every year so we could all get together. We made a point of doing getaway weekends as often as we could, and my living in Paris was the perfect excuse for a spring fling.
But while I was researching good restaurants and bars for the girls weekend, my mom and stepfather became my maiden visitors to Paris. My brother Chris and his family lived just a couple hours north in London, where he worked for a British consulting firm. Now that I was in Paris, it was the perfect excuse for Mom and Bob—two typical, conservative all-Americans—to visit their grandkids in one world-class European capital before making their way to another. So early one Friday morning in late April, instead of Vélib’ing to work, I took the Métro four stops to Gare du Nord and awaited my first visitors.
Being rush hour, the station was abuzz with commuters, travelers, and—pigeons. People talk about the minefields of dog poop in Paris and warn you about the pickpockets on the Métro, but they never breathe a word about how insane the pigeons are. Every time I sat on a park bench or café terrace, the filthy creatures had no qualms about hopping around my feet and hovering dangerously close to my head. When I was Vélib’ing, they’d play chicken, daring me to run them over before ascending in a dirty flap of wings at the very last minute, making me wobble precariously on my two wheels. They even dive-bombed me. Parisian pigeons, I was finding, were the most reckless and infuriating in the world.
There were scores of them now, sending skeevy shivers down my back as I paced below the arrivals board. I wanted to clap and scatter them in the open-air train station, but the thought of all those dirty wings fluttering around my head kept my childish impulses in check. Instead, I mentally reviewed the itinerary for the four days a
head, keeping one eager eye on the big clock and one wary eye on the flying rats.
And then in the sea of smart-looking Europeans deboarding a Eurostar train, I saw them. Mom, a sliver of a thing, appeared even smaller bobbing along in her long cardigan, draped scarf, and oversized shoulder bag. Next to her, Bob, who could play Kris Kringle’s brother with his jolly belly, silver-gray beard, and blue eyes, dwarfed her and most of the people around them. Ordinarily, I would have been embarrassed by their excessive waving, giggling, and other displays of Americanism, but as they rushed down the platform, my mom hopping up and down like a six-year-old, it just made me happy. I actually found myself swallowing a lump in my throat.
They had never even been overseas before. Their typical vacations, which were few and far between, usually entailed driving eight hours from their home in western New York to see me in Manhattan or other family in Connecticut. And being devotees of Fox News, I knew leaving U.S. soil (especially for France, zut alors!) made them more than a little anxious. That they had flown thousands of miles into foreign territory, changed planes, dealt with security, and gone through customs was nothing short of epic. And not only had they done all that, but after visiting Chris in London, they had just “chunnelled” to Paris by themselves. I was so proud of them.
“Oh, honey,” my mom cried, galloping over to wrap me in a hug. Even though I had five inches and twenty pounds on her, there was no one whose arms made me feel more secure.
“Hi, Aim!” Bob, sporting a bright red Izod under his tracksuit jacket, joined the hug. Ah, home! Comfort! Love! At the Gare du Nord in Paris. It was fantastically surreal.
As relieved as I was that they had successfully navigated the international travels, that wasn’t the end of my anxiety. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about exploring Paris with them. Back home, they drive half a mile to pick up a carton of milk, and having a lunch date is considered a major outing. Would they collapse after an hour of walking? Would they need to rest every five minutes? I saw they had their spiffy new sneakers on; were they also—horror of horrors—packing fanny packs?