I’ve always loved cupcakes. There was just something always so fascinating.They just seemed perfectly reasonable in so many ways: just the right size, and I never had to share, the flavours, the colours. As a kid, cake was high priority on any kid’s list; better than cookies, better than pie! And for me, it was like the forbidden treasure of sweets, the one you only got on special occasions, birthdays mostly, but sometimes the ‘good kid’ treat, or a rare wedding cake. But it seems my obsession, and the world’s obsession with cupcakes has grown over the past year. It’s a perfectly reasonable obsession – I mean, just LOOK at a cupcake. What’s not to love about one?  

I don’t think I need to point out it’s good points – I could make a chart, but it’d mostly be Pros: everything. Cons: nothing.

It was boredom more than anything that got me more into the kitchen. I had graduated from college, and the flighty person that I am, I had no job prospects lined up. I suddenly had free time on my hands, more than I knew what to do with. At first, it was enjoyable – my sewing machine and I had a lot of hours together. I then gravitated into the kitchen, where meals that involved simply being taken out of the box and put into the oven became more tedious and less interesting (and more cardboard-tasting in flavour). I became fascinated with the thoughts of how to put the meal together myself, that didn’t involve pre-packaged ready-made dinners. I attempted a cooking phase when I was younger – I could make chocolate chip cookies from scratch, and if I was feeling adventurous, I could make a homemade veggie pizza. Those were my limits. Most of my cooking was dabbling with boxed cake mixes and bags of cookie mix. When Julie and Julia hit the theatres, I knew my fascination wasn’t new. But when I realized that the movie was really a book first, and that book was really a blog – a cooking blog – I started to read the blog. And then I was reading more blogs. By that point, there was no turning back. I was a goner. I wanted to cook. I wanted to bake, and broil, and fry. Mostly I wanted to bake. Mostly cupcakes.

 

But: I also know my skills in the kitchen (they’re not the greatest), and the thought of following in Julie Powell’s footsteps and kicking it with Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” cookbook was terrifying. Julie Powell might not have persuaded me to the dark side – that is French cooking – but she did show me a whole new side of the internet: cooking blogs. And, there are dozens! No matter where I looked, I’d find a recipe, and that recipe would lead me to a suggestion of another blog, and on and on it went. It was never ending. I guess I might be adding to the pile of cooking blogs – specifically cupcake blogs. The problem is keeping up with a blog. I generally create one and then lose interest in it in a couple weeks. Or I forget entirely I had a blog. I told myself, I wouldn’t forget because every time I baked a batch of cupcakes or I cooked something, it would remind me “Oh hey, you should blog this!” 

Generally speaking, I feel as though I get a little muse when I'm cooking. I'm not sure if it's because my mind frees up or because it's whirling with all my ingredients I'm trying to remember ("Okay, 1 cup flour, 3 eggs, 2 sticks butter... How much vanilla?") that my muse just finds a way to sneak in little phrases into my mind. It delights me, to a degree. I have always dabbled in writing, and I have been muse-less for a while. I wasn't sure if it was the lack of inspiration, or the forced paper-writing I did for my college degree. Regardless, whenever I sat down to write, nothing really came out of it. Writing about cupcakes at least gave me a focus.

For all I’ll know, I’ll get three recipes in, and decide, “I don’t want to bake cupcakes anymore,” and that will be that.

Here’s to a new project: an attempt at blogging and an attempt at baking (which is far yummier than blogging, that’s for sure!). And here’s to you, you poor suckers, who might have read this!

Note: I originally started this over at tumblr, but I didn't like the layout. Some of the options were nice, like being able to have a nice lovely cooking quote from Julia Child on there, or posting my favourite cupcake sites. But regardless, I just didn't feel like I meshed well with tumblr. It was a little tricky. So here I am, blogspot!