Blog Posts by The Daily Meal

Find out which cupcakery is home to the number one cupcake in AmericaIt's a fact: America loves cupcakes.

These cute little confections first stole our hearts on a national level in the early 2000s thanks to a famous reference from Sex and the City. Soon, bakeries dedicated just to cupcakes - or cupcakeries, as they prefer to be called - popped up around the country, and people saw potential for greatness. Later on, when the cupcake craze exploded into a full-blown industry, there was talk of a "cupcake bubble" and everyone speculated as to when it would pop.

The Top 50 Cupcakes in America

Clearly, they were wrong. Today, cupcakes have grown into much more than bake sale fodder. From gowns literally made of cupcake tiers to $55,000 red velvet cupcakes used to pop the question, cupcakes have become a food trend that just won't die.

America's Weirdest Cupcakes

In fact, they're kind of everywhere.

To help you tell the good from the bad (and the ugly), The Daily Meal has come up with a list of the 50 best cupcake shops in America - and the must-try

Starbucks locations break from the cookie-cutter moldIt's been said that you're never farther than 170 miles from a Starbucks in America - and we can assume that will become only more true as Starbucks continues its global domination. As of July 2012, there were 17,651 Starbucks locations worldwide, with an additional 1,500 planned for 2013. In fact, the company just recently announced that it would be opening its 1,000th location in Japan this summer.

The Coolest Starbucks Stores Around the World

And while a Starbucks location has a certain aesthetic - dark wood paneling, Pantone green accents, chic and comfortable seating for a true coffeehouse vibe - we can all admit that our Starbucks locations have a big box store, cookie-cutter feel to them. So when we find uniquely designed Starbucks stores from Singapore to Amsterdam, we get excited for the unusual. With innovative design, unique architecture that fits within the city's landscape, and unusual concepts, these are the Starbucks worth visiting.

The Ultimate Guide to

Yikes - UK pizzeria Paul's Pizza is really upping its spice factor, as the Daily Mail reports that the Saltdean Sizzler pizza might just be the spiciest in the world. Only nine challengers have been able to eat the entire pizza since last year, although 1,307 have been sold.

10 Spiciest Dishes in America

Accoding to creator Paul Brayshaw, the 10-inch pizza uses the ghost chili to create a chili paste, topped with chili extract to amp up the spice. Those who end up eating all six slices get a photo on the "Wall of Flame," while everyone else ends up on the "Wall of Shame."

The World's 10 Spiciest Hot Sauces

Brayshaw has sent along a pizza to Warwick University to be tested by Guinness World Records, saying that if his pizza was over 1 million Scoville units, it would be the spiciest on record. There has yet to be a Guinness World Record for spiciest pizza, but the spiciest pepper to date is the Trinidad Scorpion pepper, at 1,463,700 Scoville units.

Bring the Heat! 5 Spicy Vegan

For any good, diet-abiding citizen, a simple trip to the supermarket or convenience store can easily feel like a tap dance across a minefield of temptations - having to narrowly skirt well-concealed calorie-bombs at nearly every turn.

Click here to see Unhealthy Drinks to Avoid at the Supermarket

Areas like the frozen foods aisle and the chips and cookies shelves are obvious danger zones for the health-conscious shopper, but be careful not to overlook the potential diet pitfalls sitting in those beverage-stocked cold cases. From juices and iced teas to flavored milks and protein shakes, drinks can often be like the evil ninja warriors of dieting.

What Your Drink Says About Your Relationship Status

Oftentimes, many of those drinks we are led to believe are "healthy" (thanks, in large part, to shrewd marketing), are actually quite the opposite.

The Coolest Starbucks Stores from Around the World

Just because drinking tea can be good for your health doesn't mean that bottle of calorie-

Pizza! If you grew up obsessed with it - postgame pizza, movie pizza, baby-sitting pizza, college pizza, pizza, pizza, pizza! - and followed that American passion for cheese, sauce, and bread with an adult pursuit of the best slice, the finest pie, the Platonic Neapolitan, then the idea of naming America's best is likely contentious.

12 Most Bizarre Pizza Toppings

"A best pizza list? I know pizza. That's not great pizza!" Yes, pizza is tough to rank responsibly. Consider that just years ago, The New York Times' then critic Sam Sifton said Motorino "serves the city's best pizza." It was enough to make you roll your eyes and call him out for knowing better, right? City's best? Not its best artisanal or Neapolitan pie? What about its best slice? And what is a "best" slice or pie anyway? After all, you could argue that great pizza can be many different things.

When Did Pizza Meet Red Pepper Flakes?

Given America's current love affair for Neapolitan pies, some might argue great pizza

Because, really, need we say more?When Crazy, Stupid, Love came out, fans were ogling Ryan Gosling in all his tanned glory, but beyond the custom suits and the perfect abs, many viewers claimed that seeing Ryan Gosling down a slice of pizza while looking red-carpet ready was what sent them over the edge. Well, really anything Ryan Gosling does drives us over the edge, but that's another story for our teenage hormones.

There's something about seeing a guy put food away like it's nothing - it's so manly. And when that guy just happens to be one of the most attractive actors in Hollywood, it makes the visual that much more appealing.

Think about every Brad Pitt movie you've ever seen - he's always eating. Whether it's a plate of nachos, shrimp cocktail, or even a hot dog, apparently it's become a habit of directors to draw attention to his mouth, which we're totally fine with since it's just about perfect.

While we've already catalogued a good portion of , we went off screen to chronicle our favorite famous faces in the act

Seafood lovers concerned about sustainability may already be familiar with the popular Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch's pocket and mobile guides, which divide up fish caught in the United States into easy-to-follow "Best Choices," "Good Alternatives," and "Avoid" lists based on the management of the fisheries for each species, population data, and fishing methods. While helpful, these lists leave out a component also worth considering when making seafood choices: toxin levels and omega-3 levels.

But now there's a new list, dubbed "The Super Green List," which attempts to take all of these factors into account and boil them down to a "top 10" list. The fish that make this list have fewer than 216 parts per billion mercury and 11 parts per billion PCBs (a toxic byproduct of industrial activities), and yield at least 250 milligrams of omega-3 fatty acids per day based on a weekly consumption of eight ounces of fish per week. To put some of these numbers in perspective, according to

Kathleen King of Tate's Bake Shop helps us celebrate one of our all-time favorite cookiesCookies - people can't get enough of them and neither can we. Out of all of the cookies there are to enjoy, there's one classic variety that always takes the number one spot in our hearts. It's the one that has the mouse asking for a glass of milk, the one that is the perfect combination of chocolate and buttery dough, and the one that's so popular that it has its own national holiday on May 15.

Can you guess what it is?

The Ultimate Guide to Cookies

That's right, it's the chocolate chip cookie, and to help us celebrate the delicious treat, renowned baker Kathleen King of Tate's Bake Shop was able to share some of her most coveted industry secrets to help us make the perfect one. While her critically acclaimed store in Southampton, N.Y., only opened in 2000, King has been baking since the age of 11. Only 10 years later, King opened her first bake shop at the age of 21, and has since published three cookbooks, won several awards, and now bakes more than 2 million cookies per week at