There was a point, sometime in the early 2000s, when cupcakes made the transition from a dessert to the dessert. No one is quite sure how it happened, or when, exactly—these things are difficult to track with accuracy—but it had something to do with the slowing of the economy and the rising of Magnolia Bakery, with the continued ascendance of gendered foods and the sudden influence of Sex and the City and Americans' collective devotion to reality television and their collective frustration with the Atkins diet.