In the beginning there were cupcakes...

Ok, so my very first blog post was a total bust. It had no actual information, no points of interest, and was exactly two sentences long...maybe three; either way it blew chunks.

Basically all you need to know about me is that I love cupcakes. I know, I know, everybody loves cupcakes. What I mean is that I LOVe cupcakes. I don`t just eat them, I sniff them, touch them, study them, and most of all I bake them. Enter the quest for "The Perfect Cupcake." (add fading echo here)

My name is Mandy but I aspire to one day be the Cupcake Queen of Toronto, no wait, The World! Ah hem...maybe just Toronto.

So my journey, technically, began back in November last year when my friend Vee came over to my place to bake a cake for her Husband's surprise party. She brought a box of Betty Crocker confetti Angel Food Cake and two springform pans. The fun part about this particular cake mix is that it expands like nobodies business and makes a ridiculous amount of batter. So much in fact that once it was done expanding we filled both springform pans almost to the top (silly us, we thought it couldn't possible expand more) and then each ate enough batter goo that we were sick and then still had enough to fill the cupcake pan I pilfered from an old roommate (Thanks Jay). This was how my first ever batch of cupcakes were born.

This might have ended simply as a happy accident except that we didn't have any icing. You see, neither of us had ever iced a cake with anything other then canned Duncan Heinz frosting which incidentally tastes like hydrogenated death sauce. That's right, "Hydrogenated Death Sauce."

Not as good as you'd think, right?

Anyhoo, by the time we finished our sugar-induced giggle fit and peeled ourselves off the floor the grocery store had closed for the night.

Well, it was time to do what my generation does best, I puled up my browser and googled for all I was worth. Eventually I came up with this:

Classic Vanilla Frosting - The Cupcake Book by Susanna Fee

6 oz. (175g) butter, softened

3 cups (350 g) confectioners' sugar

2 tbsp. milk

6 drops vanilla extract

and thus an obsession was born.

Those glorious cupcakes were the first batch of cupcakes I had ever made in my adult life, but it was only the beginning. Since then I have begun the quest for the perfect cupcake. (start music now...think 1980s John Williams) Join me as I take my journey through bad recipes, burnt offerings and smushed travel containers. I may not be a great blogger, but I make damn good cupcakes.

Cheers,

The Cupcake Queen