An amazing challenge was requested by the party girl, Mars, to cook 50 cupcakes as the dessert for her 30th birthday party.

The Bakening

Last week, Mars asked me and Chaz if we'd like to bake the cupcakes she'd like as the dessert at her 30th birthday party. We jumped at the chance though, truth be told, due to the consumption of cider had by one particular member of the baking party, the promise wasn't immediately remembered until later in the week. Thankfully, the devotion to the adorable Tamara was such that we both dragged our selves from our warm bed (me) hard floor (Chaz) in the early hours (9:30am) of Saturday morning to brave the supermarket to purchase the ingredients.

We had boozedly planned the events over wine and octopus at Cumulus a few days before, and list in hand, set about percuring butter, flour, lemons and 80% cocoa solids chocolate to create 25 lemon cupcakes and 25 chocolate heart stoppers.

The production-line started with the lemon cupcakes, and Chaz's wonderful idea to inject the freshly baked cakes with goo - respectively, lemon curd into the vanilla cup cakes, and melted white chocolate into the dark chocolate cup cakes. The vanilla cup cakes had cream cheese, lemon zest icing, while the chocolate cupcakes had dark and white chocolate 'bits' in the batter, with white chocolate and cream cheese centres, with shards of dark chocolate and fudge icing.

Heart attacks on a platter!

We decorated with sugared lemon slices and shards of dark chocolate - then transported the delectable, silver cupped cakes to the venue. By all accounts (mostly by the many empty corrugated papers) it was a great success. Most of the people I spoke to had one of each and while it was close, it seemed the vanilla with lemon injected, cream cheese covered cup cakes were the winner for the evening.

I was so diligent with my filming right up until about 3pm then I completely forgot to film or photograph the final product. They looked rustic and homemade, but in a good way - Chaz took a few photos and if he managed to capture a finished cupcake I'll post it for you to see.

Context

For those who might need to have some context: Mars is Tamara's nick-name. She is the long-time partner of Chaz, who I worked with at Melbourne University last year. they both live around the corner - they're my neighbours. I now work with Mars at my present job. It's all deliciously incestuous.