Franklin Pierce was known as Handsome Frank. This is the kind of thing that can make a certain type of person, you know the type to dedicate a part of her life to developing president-themed cupcakes, lose hours to the internet looking for a picture of him she found handsome. Beauty, folks, is in the eye of the beholder. If those lists of the “most handsome presidents” don’t bring that point home, I don’t know what will.

Poor Franklin Pierce. He had some serious sad times in his life. The one that stands out above all others, though is that just before he became president, he and his wife were on a train with their last surviving child, and due to a freak accident, the child was killed right in front of them. How do you come back from that? Some say that Pierce never did.

Pierce was from New Hampshire. Despite this, during the increasing contentious era leading up to the Civil War, he had southern sympathies. In this time, this made him a doughface.

The cake:

The doughface thing was just too good to pass up in developing a cupcake. Originally I wanted to do a north meets south cupcake. As a result, the cupcake is poundcake and it is drizzled with sweet potato pie filling. This was a nod to the south. The frosting turned out to be vanilla buttercream with a touch of ginger. However, I forgot all about the north in making this cupcake! The frosting was supposed to be maple flavored. Like his presidency, his cupcake didn’t quite turn out as planned. The black sugar sprinkles are an illusion to the grief that consumed him when his last son was killed.