Bart Boehlert's Beautiful Things

I'm stuck in the house sick today and tomorrow is TD's birthday, so I made cupcakes. I love cupcakes and TD does too. They are like the perfect little treat for each person. My favorite are vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing. I use a recipe off the internet from the Magnolia Bakery though I'm not a big fan of the bakery itself. If I buy cupcakes, I go to Billy's Bakery on Ninth Avenue. Good cupcakes, and no attitude.

First the cupcakes cool.


My favorite part is decorating because it's creative. I'm not very precise. I just combine different color icings and decorations like abstract paintings. I don't mean that in a pretentious way, I mean do whatever you feel like -- then it's an expression of your personal taste; that's what style is. You want your personal taste to run through your shirts and your sheets and your cupcakes. I have a bunch of different color decorations and I keep them in a bag from the Apple store, below. Chic, no?


My favorite decorations are these multi-colored sprinkles. Don't they just look like the circus?


So now the icing. I make three different colors. One white, and I'm thinking a pale pink and a dusty blue, kind of French, as if Marie Antoinette were decorating cupcakes. For the blue I add one drop of blue coloring and one drop of red.


Then I combine the different color icings and decorations. Voila. Cupcakes delight the eye as much as the palette. I think TD will like. It's fun to bake on a cold December afternoon.


Now I'm going to take a nap.