Now that Restaurant Week and Gastronomy Days have ended in France, it’s time to remind ourselves that:
– there’s more to life than the Food Channel,
– most food blogging is a form of pornography (nothing wrong with that, mind you, but best to call a fork a fork),
– there may be a secret to a successful champagne-infused langoustine with a verbena emulsion but there’s no secret to eating well (keep it fresh, keep it close), and
– Paris macaroons aren’t so different from Pittsburg cupcakes after all.
Yes, Cupcake Camp is returning to Paris on the afternoon of Sunday Oct. 2, 2011. I made sufficient mockery of its first Paris edition last year so I’ll try to play it straight this year.
Cupcake Camp is a charity event whose 2011 proceeds will be donated to the French chapter of Make a Wish Foundation, an association that helps fulfill the wishes of gravely ill children.
Entrance is free to Cupcake Camp with visitors paying for any drinks and cupcakes. There will be live music, a raffle, and icing galore.
The event will take place from 3 to 5 p.m. at Le Comptoir Général by Canal Saint Martin, 80 quai de Jemmapes in the 10th arrondissement. To read about CG on France Revisited and see its location on a map see here.
The cheery cupcake (or fairy cake) so beloved to children in the US and UK was largely unknown in Paris until four or five years ago. Since then a half-dozen cupcake shops have entered the bakery scene in Paris (can donut shops be far behind? hopefully, yes), and some traditional French bakeries and caterers occasionally add them to their displays. There are also several home-based cupcake makers offering cupcakes and cakes made to order for parties.
I’ll be organizing a taste-testing of the offerings of the better professional cupcake bakers of Paris for the purposes of a France Revisited “Tasted-Tested” article this fall.
If you’re over 20, have some culinary cred and would like to take part in a France Revisited taste-testing of the products of professional cupcakers in Paris write to me at gary [at] francerevisited.com.
© 2011 Gary Lee Kraut