I just finished a too-short weekend in St. Louis that included a lot of ham, a trip to the Missouri Botanical Garden, some craft beer, a failed excursion to Ted Drewes (closed for Easter!), gougères and a pretty perfect French 75.
I made orange rolls and one of those throw-everything-in-the-baking-dish egg bakes at my parents’ house for Sunday brunch, too. I’m full.
When I was in college, I worked for a couple of months at the new cupcake store in Georgetown, right after it opened. This was before muffin tins became the optimal delivery method for overpriced cake, or maybe right at the start of that trend. The shop where I had a short-lived stint as a cash-register girl went on to be the focal point of a reality TV show, but my closest brush with fame was the time John Kerry waited in the block-long line for a box of six.
Working there was a pleasant enough experience. Fifteen years later, I have no memory of why or how I quit. And I don’t think that time ruined cupcakes for me — but I’m also not sure the last time I craved one or baked one or even absentmindedly picked one up out of an assortment of desserts at a wedding or baby shower.
Then, a few months ago, I made a recipe for coconut bread that turned out… fine. Edible. Uninteresting. Even so, I thought there was a kernel of something delicious in the recipe. I jazzed it up (buttermilk! pineapple!), scaled it down into two-bite portions and slathered it in cream-cheese icing. Turns out, I was onto something.
The resulting cupcakes are dense, tangy and sweet. I’m someone who’s leery anytime there is one single halfway-healthy ingredient in her dessert, who’d rather be knocked sideways by a slice of the darkest dark chocolate cake. And even though there’s no chocolate to be found here, this is my kind of cupcake.
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