Dear cupcake-lovers, quit being so pretentious and just eat a slice of cake. Although cake is always second to pie, it is still the original and most sought after dessert of all sweets. Cake is a staple for every celebration. What’s a birthday, wedding or graduation without cake? Furthermore, is there not a sense of rage and disgust when you show up to a party and find out no one brought a cake?

From bundt cake to crumb cake to angel food cake to upside-down cake, most people love cake. That being said, cupcakes are at the opposite end of the spectrum and the bane of cake’s existence. If cake is the mother of all desserts, cupcakes are cake’s pretentious, ungrateful daughter.

Why eat a cupcake when you can eat a whole cake? It’s like having a morsel of deliciousness rather then an entire platter of it. I understand cupcakes are cute with their dollops of icing and adorable decorations. However, I still maintain that cupcakes have no place in the dessert world, and here’s why:

The first major problem is the frosting.

Half of a cupcake is cake and the other half is frosting. Who wants to bite into a dessert with a mouthful of heavy, sugary gunk? I don’t care if it takes like heaven on earth. A piece of cake gives you the perfect ratio of cake to frosting. With a cupcake, you end up missing the most important part – the cake itself – and wasting your time with a mound of frosting.

Second is the amount of effort it takes to eat a cupcake.

When I eat a dessert, I don’t want to strategize how I’m going to eat it, and I definitely don’t want to look like an idiot trying to get my mouth around an enormous mound of frosting. I want to eat it as quickly and efficiently as possible.

No matter what your cupcake-eating strategy is, you always end up with a mess of crumbs, frosting and an awkward piece of demolished cake to shove in your mouth. Some would say, “Well, Madison, that’s why you use a fork.” Well, if I’m going to use a fork and a plate, then I’m just going to get a piece of cake instead. What’s the point?

The third problem I have with cupcakes is their decor. It is perhaps what makes them so unlikable above anything else.

Even with their fancy and glamorous decorations, cupcakes hold no candle to cake itself. Sprinkles are one thing, but elaborate flowers and decorations made out of fondant are past ridiculous. Earth to cupcake bakers – cake is an art in itself.

Creating elaborate “works of art” in the form or frosting and sugar is just mocking the generations of the cupcake’s classic cake predecessors.

Given these reasons, cupcakes are a waste of time and a waste of perfectly good cake. Why are there countless cupcake bakeries sprouting up all over the U.S., and why do we have TV shows devoted to baking and decorating cupcakes?

Let’s look at our lives and look at our choices, America. Get it together and just eat a dang piece of cake.

Sincerely, a die-hard cake lover.

Column by Madison Wepfer, Assistant Features Editor