'Martha Stewart's Cupcakes' - Cookbook Spotlight

'Martha Stewart's Cupcakes'
Recipes from the editors of Martha Stewart Living
Photographs by Con Poulos and others
Clarkson Potter -- 2009
Buy it on Amazon

If there's one thing in the food blogosphere that provokes as strong a reaction as the words "Martha Stewart," it's "cupcake." So when we heard that Martha was busting out a brand-new book containing 175 of the suckers, we knew we had to get behind the scenes.

Martha's test kitchen cooks are both notoriously talented and fussy about their recipes, so we went straight to the top of the editorial food chain to find out which of the tome's 352 pages contained the best palm-sized cakes. (If you just can't wait, it's after the jump).

As with "Martha Stewart's Cookies," this is a thorough, imaginative and utterly vibrant paean to a beloved member of the baked goods family. The title truly does say it all: there's nothing but cupcakes as far as the eye can see. There's cupcake frosting, cupcake decorations, cupcakes for every season and occasion -- there's even a recipe for "Creepcakes" for, yes, Halloween. It's a candy-colored rebuke to the cupcake haters, those who view the craze as an infantile indulgence or see the diminutive desserts as the cloying, edible equivalent of those tiny dogs who travel around in handbags. Cupcakes, as done by Martha and her team, are a force to be reckoned with. The cover photo says it all: Cupcakes are here and they're not going anywhere, except maybe to your mouth.

See what we tested, what a top test-kitchen toque recommends and find out whether the book's worth buying after the jump.

Quality of pictures: These are photos that could induce an otherwise sane reader to start licking the pages. The cupcakes manage to look impeccable without being intimidating: They're cheery little islands beckoning you to come and stay for an extended vacation.

Takeaway Tips: Like all of Martha Stewart's baking cookbooks, this one comes with a very handy section on basics that covers everything from baking ingredients and tools to decorating ingredients and tips on various techniques. Frosting recipes get their own section, which avoids the potential confusion of lumping them in with their cupcake brethren. Additionally, templates for cupcake decorations and step-by-step instruction for things like how to make marzipan bumblebees or graham cracker sand help to make this a winningly user-friendly guide.

We tested: Maple Cupcakes with Maple Buttercream.

According to Jennifer Aaronson, Martha Stewart Living's food and entertaining editorial director, there were many, many favorites among the book's recipe testers -- trying to pick just one cupcake to test proved an enviable challenge.

However, Aaronson's description of the Maple Cupcakes -- "if you eat them straight out of the oven, they're like the best pancakes you've ever eaten" -- was too tempting to pass up. And she was right: The cupcakes did indeed taste like pancakes that had been soaked in syrup, and that was before the addition of the maple buttercream, which was basically maple-flavored whipped butter. But in a good and wildly addictive way.

Since they were sweetened only with maple syrup, the cupcakes lacked the wild highs and crashing lows that accompany most desserts, making them, somewhat ironically, an acceptable breakfast food falling somewhere between muffin and pancake. If you ever need an excuse to eat cupcakes for breakfast, look no further.

Worth the investment: If you're a cupcake lover, absolutely. If you're not as easily seduced by cupcake charms but are looking for ideas for fun and relatively easy desserts for parties, picnics or just about any other occasion, this is still worth the money. And if you don't bake but love to fall asleep looking at pretty pictures of sweet things that other people bake, then this may be the book for you.