CAKE OR DEATH!!!

Cake please!!!

This is probably one of my favorite Eddie Izzard comedy skits ever.  Mostly because I love cake.  Mmmm...cake. See Cake or Death here!

My love of cakes probably started as most people's do around their childhood friend's birthdays.  I really didn't get to eat my first cake (that I remember) until around 2nd grade in Happy Hollow elementary school in W. Lafayette, Indiana.  I remember being invited to a friend's birthday party - and at that time and age, everyone in the classroom was invited - and seeing my first birthday cake.  It was decorated with white frosting and colorful icing and lettering.  It may even have been a Disney Character...whatever it was I don't remember.  But what I DO remember is that in the sickenly sweet frosting that covered the large rectangle of cake, was soft, lucious, sweet, airy cake.

I am one of those people that unless the frosting/icing is light to medium sweet buttercream or whipped cream icing, I scrape it all off.  My sweet tolerance (for a cake lover) is low.

My mother was never a baking kind of person.  She can make amazing food but she doesn't really do the whole baking cookies and cakes and tarts thing.  That is - as Austin Powers would say - not her bag, baby.  So for me, I could only really get cake at birthday parties and every now and then, Jewel-Osco (a Grocery store chain) when I really whined.

I started baking when I was in High School.  I knew that other people's parents baked and figured that I could do it too.  I begged and pleaded with my parents to buy me a Betty Crocker cookbook.  In fact I probably still have it some where at my parents house.  Anyways, Betty Crocker cookbook showed me all the cakes and candies that I could be making.  I made a yellow cake as my first cake, followed by a sponge cake, and then I progressed onto caramels and toffees after my parents complained cakes were fattening.  An addition of a very old old Muffins/breads/and baked goods book ignited me into making bagels, croissants, and challah bread from scratch.

Cake was still one of my favorites.  But only if I put in half the sugar that the recipe asked for - I found that out quickly. :)

Then came the cupcakes.  It seemed perfect - mini cakes and are easy to hold and that you didn't need a fork to eat!  I started baking those in College once I moved out of my parents house I believe. mmm.

I'm happy with the addition of the new gourmet cupcakes shops that are springing up all over Chicago (my home town) and London (my host town).  While a lot of them are delicious, some of them are really just really bad cake topped with way too colorful and too sweet icing. 

Favorites in London:
Crumbs and Doilies - Lovely flavors and nice people!
 Bea's of Bloomsbury - known for their infamous Cookie Monster cupcake!
Hummingbird Bakery - Lucious red velvet with cream cheese icing

I have this thought that when i retire, that I would open up a cafe/cupcake bakery that is attached to an independent bookshop.  We'll see how well it works.

(Found on a fanpop website)

So cute!!!

So yes...cake.  Who doesn't love it!