Starbucks Cupcakes

For many years, I was never really satisfied with the pastry offerings at Starbucks. I like my pastries to be good and evil, mostly made of fat and sugar. The biscotti, lemon loaf, oat bar or chocolate dipped pretzel just didn't do it for me. Recently, I was surprised when my husband brought me the Double Chocolate Cupcake with a Black Cherry Mocha. Starbucks had jumped on the Cupcake Bandwagon at last! Love at first bite! Today I fell out of love with it.

When I went to Starbucks today, there were no Double Chocolates, so I bought two each of the two types left, a Vanilla one and "Chocolate Bloom." Priced at four for $8, one for $2.25. I excitedly pulled the Chocolate Bloom out of its overpackaged home, took a loving bite, and... it was frozen, and I couldn't taste much. I mistakenly believed it was baked locally, fresh. How naive can you get?

Then, I noticed that it was "Manufactured exclusively for Starbucks, Seattle, Washington." Where was this thing baked? Finally, I perused the label, which looked alot like the labels you get on those cardboard cheap ingredient baked goods you can buy at Safeway. Ah yes. The delicious and essential ingredients of guar gum, xantham gum, propylene glycol, stearoyl-2-lactylate, and tricalcium phosphate. And that was just the yummy cake part.

The icing only had a few ingredients that I wasn't familiar with in my baking at home. Soy lecithin, palm oil (yeah! trans fats!), and carmine (colour).

Here's a rundown on these special added ingredients:

Guar Gum: thickener made from guar beans, emulsifier, stabilizer. Okay, at least it's naturally obtained.
Xantham Gum: Made by fermenting glucose or sucrose (sugars). Purpose similar to guar gum.
Propylene Glycol: Industrially derived chemical used in automotive antifreeze and used to deice planes. A humectant food additive. Ah, to keep it moist? Also a solvent for food colourings and flavourings. Not toxic at low levels. Nice!
stearoyl-2-lactylate: Emulsifier and humectant. Common organic chemical additive in bread-type products.
tricalcium phosphate: Probably used as a raising agent. Various forms are found in nature. Pass.
Soy Lecithin: Soy-bean derived fatty acid. Another emulsifier.

In confectionery it reduces viscosity, replaces more expensive ingredients, controls sugar crystallization and the flow properties of chocolate, helps in the homogeneous mixing of ingredients, improves shelf life for some products, and can be used as a coating. In emulsions and fat spreads it stabilizes emulsions, reduces spattering during frying, improves texture of spreads and flavour release.

carmine: A bright red colour pigment, produced "by boiling dried insects in water to extract the carminic acid and then treating the clear solution with alum, cream of tartar, stannous chloride, or potassium hydrogen oxalate; the coloring and animal matters present in the liquid are thus precipitated." Yay! Get your daily dose of insect extract right here!

How sad it is when love affairs don't last.