Longtime KTLA entertainment reporter Sam Rubin, who suddenly passed away Friday at the age of 64, is properly being remembered by friends and colleagues as an innovator in TV news and show business. But one innovation, as Rubin himself would probably admit, may stand above the rest: how to maximize the enjoyment from eating a cupcake.
As Rubin said on the KTLA Morning News in 2022, “there are things about someone that you associate specifically with that person.”
While he admitted that he didn’t own the patent for the “cupcake sandwich,” he shared the recipe for the KTLA audience a multitude of times throughout his nearly 33 years at the station, that will forever be associated with Sam Rubin.
For what Rubin called “better frosting distribution,” he showed Los Angeles that the most efficient way to eat a cupcake wasn’t to just bite into the frosted treat as is. Instead, eaters should rip the bottom of the cupcake off and slap it on top, creating a sandwich with the frosting in the middle.
Rubin, as his colleagues would tell you, was as proud of that “invention” as his illustrious career covering Hollywood’s brightest stars, even if those stars “betrayed him.”
On March 23, 2022, Rubin entered the KTLA studio fuming for one of the only times in his career.
His target? Academy Award winning actress Anne Hathaway.
Hathaway made an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show the day before, where she shared her “unusual way” of eating a cupcake. Clarkson and the studio audience was in awe of Hathaway’s method.
Rubin, a journalist and a newsman appearing on television for decades, took no issue with others copying his cupcake innovation. After all, he showed the KTLA family his invention for education purposes.
But rather than crediting Rubin for the cupcake sandwich, Hathaway passed it off as her own concoction.
“Anne did not invent the idea of a cupcake sandwich, I did,” Rubin joked. “I’ve demonstrated my cupcake method on TV for years — for decades. It is mine … I’m upset, the world is outraged. I believe there is plans for nationwide protests.”