I wish I could claim these exquisite morsels as my own. They are from The Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook by Jennifer Graham. The book was published by Penguin in 2007 and you can see a little more of it if you follow the link. It's a book I have browsed a number of times in bookshops because it is delightful to look at. There is something about page after page of gorgeously decorated cupcakes that makes me smile. So when I spotted it on the shelves at Academic Remainders yesterday - at roughly half the RRP - I decided it was time to stop browsing and take it home. It is a 'feel-good' book if ever I read one and it doesn't really matter if I never make a single cupcake. I can dream.
The dream, though, appears not to have lasted long for The Crabapple Bakery. According to the book, the story begins like this:
Jennifer Graham started out making cupcakes to display on the range of old-fashioned cake stands she was selling at craft markets around Victoria, in a bid to encourage customers to buy her wares. After only a couple of weeks the customers were not coming to buy her cake stands but to buy her beautiful cupcakes.
Sound like a fairytale? Success followed success and Jennifer and her family opened a shop in a 'village'. After three years, they opened a factory, became a company in 2006 and opened a retail store in the Prahran Market. And why wouldn't they when their cupcakes look so cute?
But when I logged on this morning to look at the website and see how business was faring, I encountered a dose of harsh reality. The Crabapple Bakery is no more. It seems the receivers were brought in and, from what I could gather from the various comments I followed, the company was sold earlier this year and the doors were closed.
I now suspect that this little book that I find so uplifting is something of an embarrassment to its publishers. But it shouldn't be. Despite the sad ending of the Crabapple Bakery, the book is a joy to look at and read. And it still brings a smile to my face - although the joy is tempered by the fairytale's sad ending.
