{"id":69966,"date":"2014-04-18T14:30:04","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T18:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=69966"},"modified":"2014-04-18T15:17:44","modified_gmt":"2014-04-18T19:17:44","slug":"the-coconut-cupcake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/18\/the-coconut-cupcake\/","title":{"rendered":"The Coconut Cupcake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/cupcakes.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-69981\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/cupcakes-1024x901.jpg\" alt=\"cupcakes\" width=\"600\" height=\"528\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/cupcakes-1024x901.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/cupcakes-300x264.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/cupcakes.jpg 2046w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Yesterday I made some Easter-themed cupcakes,\u00a0topped with cream-cheese frosting and dusted with green-tinted coconut. Within each nest, I placed four\u00a0jelly beans. Brand: Teeny-Been. They were,\u00a0if I do say so myself, pretty cunning.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">When I was asked to contribute a word to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1452105308\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1452105308&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=theparrev0f-20\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Let\u2019s Bring Back: The Lost Language Edition<\/i><\/a>, I was thrilled to have a chance to agitate for my favorite adjective.\u00a0It\u2019s not that the word has disappeared, exactly, but it has shed one of its meanings. While one usage always denoted craftiness, the\u00a0other meaning was benign, even infantile. Something cunning was dear, precious, made with craft and care. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>Cunning<\/em> seems to have been particularly appropriate to things on a small scale\u2014perhaps denoting the skill necessary to convey perfection in miniature\u2014and Lord knows we can\u00a0hardly\u00a0afford to lose a word in the already-small lexicon of things used to describe the diminutive. <em>Cunning<\/em> is a second cousin to <em>cute<\/em>:\u00a0while <em>cute<\/em> applies only to the viewer\u2019s reaction and pleasure, <em>cunning<\/em> gives full credit to the person behind the effect, a sly nod to the intention, and manipulation, behind the effort.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In the 1917 cookbook <em>A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband<\/em>, a Tut\u2019s tomb of a certain kind of homely vernacular, everything\u2014from triangles of toast to croquettes to the little butterflies decorating the table at a Rainbow Announcement Luncheon to the mini hatchets at a Washington\u2019s Birthday Tea\u2014rates the cunning treatment. This was, as Jane and Michael Stern term it in their \u201cLadies\u2019 Lunch\u201d chapter of <em>Square Meals<\/em>, the era of \u201csmart and cunning entertaining,\u201d and no conceit could be taken too far. After all, as <em>A Thousand Ways\u00a0<\/em>is at pains to remind us, labor-saving devices were starting to come in. Women\u2019s suffrage could not be ignored. Yes, the characters in these books are homemakers, but they are filled with energy and imagination and the desire to express their tastes and intelligence. The results may seem frivolous, but the intention was clear: to bring beauty, care, and economy to all spheres of life, however limiting or constrained. Cunning indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I made some Easter-themed cupcakes,\u00a0topped with cream-cheese frosting and dusted with green-tinted coconut. Within each nest, I placed four\u00a0jelly beans. Brand: Teeny-Been. They were,\u00a0if I do say so myself, pretty cunning. When I was asked to contribute a word to Let\u2019s Bring Back: The Lost Language Edition, I was thrilled to have a chance [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[1671,13599,743,13385,687,2393],"class_list":["post-69966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-cooking","tag-cunning","tag-cupcakes","tag-easter","tag-language","tag-words"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Story Behind \u201cCunning\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein explores the history of the adjective \u201ccunning,\u201d from its homely vernacular to its modern-day use.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/18\/the-coconut-cupcake\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Coconut Cupcake by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"April 18, 2014 \u2013 Yesterday I made some Easter-themed cupcakes,\u00a0topped with cream-cheese frosting and dusted with green-tinted coconut. 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