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Every time a birthday in my family or group of friends comes around, I’m stuck with the inevitable dilemma: what is the party cake? Getting the ice cream part is easy…you just choose the flavor the birthday girl or boy loves the most and if you don’t know you can always stick with the fail-safe vanilla and chocolate.

But when it comes down to the cake, you’re stuck trying to figure out a variety of things: type, flavor, shape, frosting, decoration…the list goes on and on. There have been years where I tried to bake a 3-layer cake, a cheesecake, a checkerboard cake, an ice cream cake…and each and every one of them came out as disasters, but what was I going to do? My son wanted a Winnie the Pooh shaped cake and I was going to give it to him!

But in more recent times, I have come to appreciate the simple art of cupcakes. Laugh if you want, but making a bear’s head out of cupcakes is A LOT easier than trying to cut and frost a big sheet cake that ends up looking like a Salvador Dali.

For example, I recently had the dilemma of being told that my nephew wanted a Rocket cake for his birthday. But he didn’t want just any Rocket cake. It had to be a 3-D Rocket cake. You know the kind that stands up like a real Rocket? He didn’t want any of that flat sheet cake cut into a Rocket shape. So naturally, I had this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. Did that kid have any idea how many layers of cake it would take to build a Rocket? It just wasn’t going to happen.

Of course, I still tried. I baked 15 layers of chocolate cake, piled them on top of each other with icing for glue, sliced away at the sides until I had the perfect Rocket shape with wings and everything, turned around to dip into the 10-lb bowl of icing…and then, it happened. My 2-foot tall masterpiece came crashing through atmosphere and exploded on my kitchen floor.

Fortunately, instead of a nervous breakdown and a regular stroke, I had a stroke of brilliance and realized that cupcakes were the answer. Stack and frost. Frost a plastic funnel and stick it on top. Voila! I had a bona fide Rocket made from cupcakes, an excited room full of children and one very happy birthday boy!

I have become especially fond of the easy chocolate cupcake recipe my mother gave me that I can use for every birthday because everyone I know will eat anything that’s made out of chocolate. And the best part is, for the family members who can’t quite digest chocolate anymore, I can add in fiber and flax seed without anyone noticing…healthy and yummy makes for the best kind of birthday treats.

One of the best parts about birthday cupcakes is the plethora of cupcake decorating ideas that I can come up with over the course of an afternoon…or the course of a couple of days when I have to bake a hundred cupcakes for a pack of hungry kids at the local elementary on my son’s next birthday.

There are some kids in the class who are still at that stage in their young lives where they are afraid of birthday regulars like balloons and clowns. So it’s nice to be able to whip out the food coloring and come up with 15 or so different colors of cupcake icing that I can use to turn each cupcake into an individual birthday present.

My secret favorite thing about decorating the birthday cupcakes is that it can become a birthday party activity with my children and their friends, taking up a load of time I would have otherwise spent chasing them around my house trying to get them to play pin the tail on the donkey, bobbing for apples and twenty other party games no children really want to play.

I buy the little edible cake toppers for cakes, jelly beans, chocolate chips, licorice strings, M & Ms sprinkles and a favorite of other items usually only reserved for ice cream variety bars and let the kids go wild. Of course, they all go home with upset tummies but I’m the coolest Mom on the block and my kids are the most popular because they had the “very best birthday party ever!”

And now we’re down to it…the very best part about cupcakes at birthday parties is that they work just like regular cake, but I don’t get any of the complaints, any of the wait or any of the mess afterwards.

I can decorate cupcakes any way the birthday boy or girl wants me to decorate it. I can build a cake that’s flat like a sheet cake or I can build a 3-D version of their favorite things.

I don’t get complaints about the portions being too big or too small and I certainly don’t get harassed for the way I cut the cake because each and every piece is shaped exactly the same and comes out the same size every time.

And of course, cupcakes lack the mess of regular cake. I don’t have to worry about cutting the cake and getting the frosting everywhere and I certainly don’t have to worry about plates, knives, forks, etc., etc. etc.

I’m proud to say that with cupcakes everyone can serve themselves and they can literally eat my cake right out of their own hands.

After all this time—all of the mistakes, all of the adventures, all of the disasters and all of the victories—I know that cupcakes really do make the best birthday cakes. And not just because it makes my life easier so I can enjoy the birthday party, but because everyone involved has a better time and always seems to have a smile at the end.

Cupcakes really are the birthday savior.

Tags: chocolate cupcake recipe | chocolate cupcake recipe | cupcake decorating ideas | cupcake decorating ideas | edible toppers | edible toppers | cupcake icing | cupcake icing | cupcakes

This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Garden nursery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.