Sweet baby cakes.

Sweet baby cakes.

It all started on a dare, like so many other spectacular fiascos or sensational triumphs.

“You are such a bigot! How can you summarily dismiss them? What do you have against them? It’s prejudice, is what it is. There! I said it.”

My friend Barbara scoffed, rolled her eyes, and leaned back; arms crossed over her ample bosom. But before I could defend myself, she resumed her attack.

“I thought better of you. How can you say you are a liberal, openminded, free thinking person if you won’t even look at something as innocent as a that?”

We sat across the table from each other in the coveted window booth at Wet Ones, a funky bar slash restaurant two blocks from our office. We shared three of four plates of appetizers and sucked our mojitos through those skinny straws, telling ourselves, we’re drinking slower.

Our chat started by arguing over politics, the recent elections, and the flurry of manic directives and proposed changes. I didn’t want to lose her friendship over something as trivial as politics - I mean really, four years from now everything will change again and four years from then, and so on. So, I changed the subject and made a snarky remark about … cupcakes.

Though I didn’t want to admit it, at least not right here, to her face, Barbara was right. I had made up my mind without any empirical evidence. I was biased against those over-iced, over-thought, over-sweetened treats.

It’s silly, I know. They are innocent, undersized, one could even say, stunted adult cakes. People think they get away with eating fewer calories because they are so small. But each cupcake has more than whatever a slice of the adult cake has. More icing, more things inside, like cholate chips or mincemeat. Whatever you put in a cake, you double for cupcakes. Because people don’t want to hunt for their goodies. If they’ll only have three or four bites, they want each one loaded with the good stuff. A batch of cupcakes is not like King Cake. Or if it is, each one will have the “baby” inside. People don’t want to look at their neighbors and see more M & M’s in the other miniature creation. That's never good for business. No, give me a fruit pie any time. It’s honest about how much filling is in each. No muss no fuss.

I rolled my eyes and shrugged. “So, what’s your point?

Barbra grinned as if she’d been waiting all day to say it. And she may very well have. After all, she always came prepared to debate club.

“Here.” She shoved a page from the Sunday paper under my nose.

“You enter this contest. When you know everything about the things, then you may voice an opinion.”

I scoffed and pushed the paper aside.

But Barbra was not to be deterred. “I knew you’d say no, so I’ve already entered you.” She gloated. “You will owe me the entry fee if you don’t show.”

I’m stubborn but also stingy and was determined not to owe her the entry fee. So, I invested at least twice the entry fee in cookbooks, ingredients, and equipment. I devoted many evenings and weekends to teaching myself how to bake, from beginning to end. Quite a few ducks looked offended and turned their beaks up when I tried to feed them my mistakes. But I learned.

I made dozens and dozens of cupcakes. Assorted flavors and icings. Brought them into work and listened to the feedback. Too dry, too salty, too lemony, not enough filling, gruesome icing and so on.

Eventually, I settled on apple lemon-lime fizz with a caramel cranberry glaze. Raspberry shortcake with dark chocolate ganache and whipped cream. And my personal favorite spicy peanut butter and banana, also known as the Hot Elvis.

At last, the big day arrived. The large church basement was filled with a dozen stoves and large tables. Twelve of us lined up behind our workstation and turned our ovens on to preheat.

There was, of course, the predictable circus with frantic screaming at spouses and other hapless relatives to run to the store for this or that, because people will always forget something. Not me, I had everything organized and lined up. I premeasured labeled and packed double of everything, just in case.

At the stroke of ten, we were off. I carefully mixed the dry ingredients together, then slowly added the milk, egg and finally added the vanilla. The recipes called for vanilla powder, but I had substituted vanilla extract many weeks ago. Since the bottle is small, I kept it separate and safely tucked in my apron pocket. I had learned to be a tad more generous with the vanilla because people expect their cupcake to be a bit sweet.

Then I divided the batter over three mixing bowls and finished each batch separately. A dash of ginger in the apple lemon-lime batter, a sniff of cayenne and garlic in the Hot Elvis batter. An extra drop or two of vanilla in the raspberry mixture. All three trays went into the oven at the same time, were rotated as rehearsed and came out as planned. While they were baking, I made the cranberry glaze, fried the bananas, made the ganache, and whipped the cream. When I finished decorating each one, I set my three dozen masterpieces out with five minutes to spare.

Five minutes is a long time to stand around and feel smug.

My doubts, of course, gnawed at all that could have gone wrong. Had the oven been hot enough, or maybe too hot, had I allowed enough time for baking and cooling off, had I screwed up the glaze? My hands in the kangaroo pocket of my apron toyed nervously with the vanilla extract bottle.

Finally, the bell rang, and I could stop worrying. The other thirty-three dozen cupcakes were displayed as well. The judges, one chef, one baker and the good reverend himself were to go from table to table and sample each offering. I had been assigned the first station. So, my cupcakes were judged first.

Chef nodded thoughtfully, the baker closed her eyes and groaned. The reverend stifled a moan. All three did not just taste but finished each of their cupcakes. I preened.

They, of course, had to sample the offerings and moved on to stations two, three, four, five and six. Rather than go behind station six to number twelve, the judges walked back down the aisle toward my station.

I assumed that Chef and the baker were really good friends, for Chef had his hand on the baker’s behind. The baker smiled dreamily. She picked up one of my raspberry cupcakes and fed the Chef, then licked the whipped cream where it had dribbled down his chin. Giggling, she let Chef lick the rest of the crumbs off her fingers. They were both all but panting. The reverend ate another Hot Elvis cupcake and adjusted himself, like a B league baseball player.

The other eleven contestants tried to keep smiling, but the strain was showing. Nobody was surprised that I won the contest. The runners-up had lovely concoctions with pumpkin spice and chocolate chip.

I had my tiny trophy and modest check in hand, when everyone descended on my little darlings. I knew my cakes were good, after all everybody in the office had given them two thumbs up, but these little winners were devoured, snatched out of people’s hands, fought over.

All morning daggers and insults had been tossed around like pizza dough, but at the end of the competition all animosity seemed forgotten. I was amazed at how quickly hatchets were forgotten and bygone buried. I could not believe the love and affection these contestants showed each other. Lots of love and affection.

I packed up my extra supplies and snuck away from the love fest. The next day I remembered that I promised to bring cupcakes to work. When I gathered the supplies to make another three batches, I was surprised to see the small bottle of vanilla extract in its usual spot on the shelf. How could that be? I looked through the box I had used on Saturday and found my apron. In the pocket was a small bottle of Spanish Fly.

My new business, Cup-id Cakes, is doing well, even though, or maybe because, I can only sell them on adults-only websites.