Cup Cake Crazy!

Trends. I don't like them. I've never been one to jump on the bandwagon... despite what my SOLE detractors say. **insert evil grin icon**. This has always served me well. The dolphin tattoo I so desperately wanted on my shoulder blade, at 16 is a good example. And yes, I know.. tatts on chicks are all de rigeur these days, but I remind you of my age. An Eastern Suburbs private school "gel" did NOT have tatts of dolphins, or anything else, back in 1981. And I will be eternally grateful to Smear, or Pronger, or whatever the kindly middle-aged ex biker tattooist that I approached that Summer, for telling me "don't ever get no tatts on ya bod that ya can't imaging being 98 and in a old people's home with."

Notwithstanding his advice, I DID get a slave chain tattooed over my hip whilst working for a feminist collective, in my 20's. The irony did not escape me.

So, to trends. I do not own any faux label handbags, designer cookware, and have never been to Kuta Beach. I have never skied (although I feel I'd do the apres bit very well), never been to a tanning salon or had a facial.

And I am rather chuffed about that in a middle-aged, aging lefty, hippy pagan kind of way.

Oh, and I was pagan LONG before "Charmed" and Fiona Horne, too.

So, to cup cakes.

They are everything I loathe about food. Trendy, American, fake, overhyped, overdecorated, overdone, overblown, sugary, girly and POPULAR.

Bah.

The Grumpy Old Woman in me gets all "reach for the automatic weapon and find the nearest clock tower" whenever I hear about Crabapple Cup Cake Queen, or read yet another nauseating ode to cup cakes on Chowhound. If I never seen another cup cake on Tastespotting, I will die a happy, albeit it still grumpy, old woman.

EXCEPT.... 2 of my favourite people recently converged along the cup cake ley line. My Mum and my online mum.

It was Mater Beige's 70th birthday this past weekend. And I wanted to make this first big mile stone birthday without our beloved Hobbit, something REALLY special. And cup cakes are RIGHT up Mater Beige's alley.... for pretty much all the reasons I hate them.

And my darling online Mum, Vida, from Class Cup Cakes makes them!

So with righteous Nag Champa-scented lefty chakra Universal Dharma, I ordered the cheesiest, showiest cup cakes I could get my hands on, from Vida, for Mater Beiges birthday.


And here's the thing......

THEY"RE WONDEFUL!!!

Seriously WonderFull!! Forget the stale Betty Croker mix with icing made from "icing sugar mix" and water.. these things are HEAVENLY.... I suspect that it's bacuse Vida makes them with such love and passion, but these little morsels are PERFECT!!

And what makes them so glorious is THE RATIO!!!... The ratio of icing to cake to mouthful is SPOT ON!!. No more too-much-cake-in-too-big-a-piece-with-not-enough-cream-cheese.

These cup cakes are DA BOMB! 2 perfect bites, each one with the Golden Mean, 1:1.618, the veritable Fibonacci sequence of icing and cake.

I am not so far gone, as to call it frosting yet, but I fear I have started on a slippery slope of trendosity, that may soon see me sporting a faux Chanel handbag and sipping a soy latte in Maling Road. But I fear, if Vida's cupcakes involved, I might gladly sell my soul, get a butterfly tattooed on my ankle and start having my eyebrows waxed.