CUPCAKES!

   

     This past Wednesday was March 17, Saint Patricks Day. It just so happens to be the day that my dad passed away fourteen years ago as well. When Jan told me how long ago it had been I was reminded of how quickly  time passes, whether you're having fun or not. 

    My daughter Autumn happens to work at Sophia's Cafe'  here in Wasilla. It's a Greek restaurant and she is the manager as well as the baker. She decided to make some cupcakes for St. Paddy's. Even though it's not a Greek holiday. The top picture isn't very accurate. For some unknown reason  the icing looks pink, but it wasn't. Pink is for Valentines Day or some such thing or a little girl's birthday or whatever. Actually the top cupcakes were the same color as the bottom one, a kind of creamy light white/yellow color with the green sprinkles and florets or whatever you call them.  The cupcakes themselves were a most delicious chocolate and the icing was butter cream. Oh my they were tasty. When I arrived there were five on the plate. We got one, and then a customer came and bought the other four in one fell swoop. That's the way it goes there at the cafe'.

    Autumn bakes bread and on certain days she bakes cinnamon rolls which are very popular. In fact some folks have become so attached to them that they've taken to making special orders for them. I've eaten her cinnamon rolls, and like Lay's potato chips, no one can eat just one, or at least you don't want to. They're huge and actually quite filling, but like a beautiful sunset or a day at the beach, you just don't want it to end. Why is it that so many of the things we love are either fattening, illegal or immoral? It just doesn't seem fair, especially to those of us who are weak willed.  The nice thing about cupcakes versus regular cake is that after you've eaten one, you're not left with the rest of a 9x13 inch pan tempting you. Plus it's a lot easier to bake cupcakes and give some to your neighbor. You come off looking like a good person for sharing, whereas if you were to deliver a pan of cake with three or four pieces missing, you look like a second rate bum who's making a feeble attempt to appear generous.

    As I was sitting here thinking back, I can't recall ever having made cupcakes before. I've baked cakes and pies and muffins. I've cooked rice pudding and cherry cobbler and Rice Krispy bars, but no cup cakes. It's really no wonder if you think about it. You have to go through all the trouble of mixing up the ingredients and then you have to try to get the mess into these little paper cups without spilling it all over. Allow me a  side bar here if you will. Speaking of spilling things, has anyone mastered the art of pouring milk from the gallon containers that you buy at Costco? Don't get me wrong, I love Costco, they're a great store, but who the heck designed the gallon milk carton? It's square, without a spout of any kind. No matter how careful I am, the milk always spills, and then dribbles down the side of the carton and onto the bottom where it gets all over the counter or inside the refrigerator or whatever. Anyway, as Forest Gump would say-"that's all I have to say about that."

    I just had a genius thought. If you had to bake a bunch of cupcakes, like for a kids birthday party or something, what if you just baked a regular cake, iced it, and then used a tool like the kind that you use to plant flower bulbs in the ground to make it look like you baked cupcakes. It would cut down on the mess and all the time it would take to ice them all individually. Plus you would be left with all the cake that didn't fit in the tool. Your leftover cake would look like a gasket for an engine.

    Perhaps if you don't like that idea, how about if you made cupcakes and instead of icing them individually, you lined them all up like a bunch of condemned prisoners and used a shot gun shell filled with your favorite icing and sprinkles and just blew it on. Of course you would have to use a very small charge of gun powder in each shell or you'd be cleaning up cupcake for a month. The folks at Remington or Winchester should look into that. With all the talk of gun control lately, they're going to need a way to make money somehow. Just a thought. Let me know if you try it.