Last week Claudia of cookeatFRET held a a great gathering of fun people for Cupcake-palooza. She had a beautiful spread of about 25 types of cupcakes from 4 local bakeries and a home-baked batch from the Cake Doctor (baked by Nashville foodie Mindy Merrill). You could practically feel your insulin level surging after a couple of rounds. As we ate, we rated them on a wildly complex sheet that had to be explained to me — twice, because I’m thick that way. As As you’d expect, there were some great cakes on that table and some, eh. Lesleyeats wrote up a pretty comprehensive posting of it here.

Cupcakes are a trend I don’t have an opinion about — I thought. But I do have opinions on cake: There are dozens of kinds of cake out there, but for some reason, the one that is sold in America’s bakeries and in cake mix form is a sponge-type cake that’s the worst of the lot.It’s too tender and it’s flavorless, really just a vehicle for frosting. And since that’s usually made with shortening, it hardly seems worth the calories, even to a sugar hound like me. This was the fate of our last bakery cake.

So it was heartening that three of the contenders — Cuppycakes, Sweet 16th and Dulce Desserts — are using other recipes. I loved the cupcakes from Dulce Desserts, run by my old running buddy Juanita. We spent a portion of our misspent youths together. I didn’t see or hear from her in years — we were both having kids — then she reappeared as a phenom in the medium of cake. I think this photo below is her dulce de leche cupcake. The cake was delicious, but the buttercream frosting was a little higher in butterfat than I like. Still, using the high butterfat specialty butter is generally a good development that raises the bar. In the end, the calculus of the rating sheet showed that that winning cupcake for me was the mocha cupcake from Cuppycake with their chocolate cupcake running a close second, and heartily endorsed by Sweet Cheeks, too.

I love fun people of all kinds, but food people are fun and delicious.

Today for lunch I met up with other food bloggers at Prince’s Hot Chicken.

The hand-painted sign just tells you you’re gonna need a bunch of napkins.

They sell water in extra-big bottles cuz you  need it, that’s why.

Everything about it is delicious, from the crisp coating to the just-enough dose of cayenne. There really are never enough napkins. If someone asks you to bring lunch, better take along a plastic bag — this stuff is juicy, sho nuff.

My pals Claudia, CeeElCee and ElZorro were there, and we had this running joke… well, you had to be there. Next time, you should come along. We had cake for dessert and everything!

Cornbread is supposed to be hot, salty and greasy. That’s why it’s good with barbecue. This specimen, obtained at a barbecue place that you may be able to identify, is sweet, soft, and muffin-shaped. Read the menu really really carefully and you discover it’s not even cornbread — it’s called “cheese biscuits.” It’s not a biscuit, either. It’s a muffin. Eaters, take a stand on this dangerous, sinister trend!