Manly McMancakes (via the Wall Street Journal)

When it comes to the competitive cupcake markets of NYC or Seattle or LA, you really need a niche within a niche, something that makes your own particular cupcakes pop.  This isn’t easy these days since the proliferation of bakeries has meant a proliferation of specialties. But David Arrick of Butch Bakery managed to find one specialty that I’ve never seen tried with cupcakes before: masculine.

After a job abroad fell through, Arrick was looking for his next career move when he drew inspiration from Magnolia Cupcakes. Cupcakes looked to be a wildly successful enterprise. The thing was, he felt like the business was way too girly for him as it was.

“Why did cupcakes need to be magical? They’re not magical for me. Where’s the masculine aesthetic?” Arrick said. “We needed to butch it up, buttercup.” And so Butch Bakery, an online delivery “masculine” cupcakery was born. (from the Wall Street Journal)

So, what exactly does it take to make a manly cupcake? First, no fancifully patterned frosting on top – all of Butch Bakery’s cupcakes have a topper of patterned-chocolate over a straightforward dollop of buttercream.  Next, flavors are named after stereotypically manly things, like Tailgate (caramel cake with a salted caramel swirl filling with vanilla buttercream) and Homerun (peanut butter cake with banana bavarian cream & crumbled bacon).

Personally, I don’t assign gender to my food.  That said, the flavors that Butch Bakery has come up with look inventive, and they’re marketing isn’t just adorable, it’s also successful: after a pre-Valentine’s mention on Daily Candy, BB’s website crashed from too many hits and they’ve been backlogged for weeks ever since.

At my place of employment, we have a two little machines known as MakerBot Cupcake CNCs (I think the name comes from how the inventor of the Cupcake CNC originally wanted to make a frosting extruder).  These adorably named bots can print small 3D shapes out of plastic.  It didn’t take much time for the crafter-types who use a machine like this to put together a program (or two) that lets the Cupcake CNC print out cupcakes.  Out of plastic, mind you, but still cute little cupcakes.

Just recently, I heard about 3D bioprinters that can print basic organic tissue, technology that can hopefully someday be used to print full organs.  I also know that the folks at MakerBot Industries have been tirelessly working to create a fully functional frostruder, and may have in fact succeeded. What’s next in the world of 3D printing?  Carbo-printers? Printcakes? A girl can dream…