Tuesday was the beau’s 30th birthday. We’d already gone skydiving on Saturday, so we kept the “real” celebration mellow. We stayed in with our best pal and brigadier,* and I made a special dinner of tator tot casserole, like the white trash we apparently aspire to be.

I was also supposed to bake something for his birthday. Oh yes, this was a big fat deal, because I like baking, and he loves it when I bake. So I always make this big production of having him pick some new dessert, and then I whip it up all special-like. This year the beau had his sights set on a chocolate caramel pecan pie. I’d never successfully made a pie crust from scratch, but damn if I wasn’t going to try. I even found a recipe for vodka pie dough, which according to reviews was supposed to produce the most tender, flaky pie crust on the face of the planet and make you weep with sheer joy. That or win the lottery. Probably both, actually.

I don’t have a food processor.** And I knew deep down inside that using a blender to combine the butter and flour would indubitably end in failure, but my tendency toward lazy-assery insisted that I should give it a shot. SURPRIZE, it did not work. Time to try cutting in the butter by hand! I set about scraping the contents of the blender into a bowl, which due to the fact that we have approximately one square foot of counter space in the kitchen was perched haphazardly on the edge of the sink, when SURPRIZE, the bowl tipped over into the sink. That was all the butter I had in the house, sitting right there in the sink. Being the calm, rational person I am, I handled this new development by bursting into tears and sobbing as if someone had died. Aw, look whose hormones decided to come out and play!

After I finally stopped wailing, then started again later while folding laundry because I don’t even know why, my best guess is that folding laundry totally sucks and is something to get incredibly upset about, then stopped again and finally calmed down for good, I decided that there would be no baking this year. Sorry, beau. Yes, I know that thirty is a big deal birthday-wise, and I wanted to do something really spectacular for you, but now I’m just running out of time and oh my god, I’d better stop thinking about it now or I’ll start bawling once more.

IN SUMMARY: That was fun! Let’s do this again in one month, please!

Maybe I couldn’t make my partner a tasty treat myself, but I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to provide him excessive amounts of sugar somehow. So on Tuesday morning, I marched myself down the block to a bakery, and proceeded to order a dozen cupcakes. Even though I wanted the cupcakes ready that very same day, they let me order special flavors. So I picked chocolate salted caramel and bacon maple pancake. They whipped them up and had them ready at 4:00 pm. Is that awesome or what?

I took these pictures post-birthday, after the leftover cupcakes had had candles stuck in them and their tops smashed in from sitting in a box in the refrigerator overnight. Even at a day old, they were still so very incredibly delicious.

I have about three words to say about that, and they are HELL @$#!%*&#@!*$#% YES.

Are these wedding dessert contenders? Possibly. Very, very possibly. It’ll come down to the price, really — the dozen I bought worked out to $2.75 each, which is spendy for a cupcake. On the other hand, these aren’t your typical grocery store cupcakes, either. On the other other hand, they said they charged extra for “wedding” cupcakes (of course) because they deliver and set up the cupcakes on tiered stands for you. I am doubtful that we actually need that level of service, but then again if we don’t have the dessert delivered, someone will have to leave the wedding and go pick them up. And there is no kitchen onsite, so we can’t just go get the cupcakes in the morning and store them at the venue all day. What if it’s hot? The frosting would melt. Yeah. So I am confused about how that whole thing is going to work out. We may have to just settle on a dessert that’s melt-proof. Like pie. Or Twinkies.

At any rate, the bakery also told me I could pick out three flavors and come in for a tasting, so I need to set that up very soon. We just polished off the birthday cupcakes last night, and I’m already experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Never mind the fact that every time I eat one, I feel like running around the block/punching someone in the face/staring very intently at the wall for several minutes. Sugar!!!!!!!11! I hate you, I love you, come back to me.

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* My brigadier moved into our spare room for the summer! At last, my life is one step closer to becoming an episode of Friends!

** OH HAI wedding registry alert!