FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS MI LINDO PONCHO!!!!

So, today is my husband's 35th Birthday and we began the morning with several phone calls from family members and an a small fire hazard.... The burning tower of cupcakes:



I used the recipe from the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook. If you live in NYC, drop everything you are doing right now and get thee to the corner of Bleeker and 11th. You will not regret it. They are amazing. So amazing that on certain warm summer nights a line forms outside filling the sidewalk. They were even featured in Sex and the City.

I lived around the corner from them and it took all my will power not to make this place a frequent stop on my way home. If you go, please understand the etiquette. Take a box, carefully place the number of cupcakes you are taking with you--yes, you will want to take one for now, and another for when you are further down the street and no one who saw you eat the first one can see you eat your second--and THEN go and pay. This is how they like it. Newbies who go up to the counter and ask for a cupcake are frowned upon. This is New York after all, and the people working there have attitude.

If you don't live in NYC, then you will have to do as I did and whip up a batch for yourself. Yesterday was my first time making them, and they were not hard to make. All the ingredients are pretty basic: LOTS of butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, and vanilla extract. All easily found even at an ESSO market.

So, I hope you find an excuse to indulge soon. Or, heck, just indulge today with no excuse. Life is too short not to live sweetly.