Have You Gone Gourmet?

My oldest is turning 9, and we want to make special cupcakes–homemade–for her to bring to school on Monday.

I don’t do cupcakes.  The Boo Platter is as fancy as I get.

But it’s her birthday, and I’m learning that little things matter and accumulate on the landscape of a child’s soul.  Lord help me embellish these cupcakes!   I search for cupcake decorating ideas, and I’m astounded by the beauty and intricacy of cupcakes made all over the world.  Cupcakes have gone entirely gourmet.  In someone’s kitchen, right at this moment, some parent has fondant butterflies and flowers neatly trimmed and little bows to tie around cupcake holders.  Another parent has frosting piped out in whimsical designs.

I don’t do cupcakes.  I’m the furthest thing from gourmet I can think of.   Can’t I just phone the Cupcake Boutique and get this delivered? 

But then, we find a picture of the most curious little cupcakes.  Someone has made a stack of cupcakes made to look just like hamburgers.

“That’s so cool, Mom!  Can we make the hamburger cupcakes?”

I buy the ingredients, brace myself, and actually pray for God’s creative genius to somehow flow into me.  God invented gourmet, after all.  Nothing is too hard or too elaborate for him.

I move forward.  I bake chocolate and vanilla cupcakes.  I slice them in half.  I let my youngest sprinkle sesame seeds on the cupcake “buns.”

Then, we color our frosting to resemble ketchup and mustard.  Our chocolate cupcake is the hamburger patty. 

Hamburger Cupcakes

It takes longer than I anticipate, and we destroy the kitchen.   But I did something gourmet this day.

Gourmet:  elaborate, rich, sensuous, and small.    A small prayer, as small as cupcakes, as small as a child turning 9.  I’ll remember this small afternoon as we sprinkled sesame seeds on cupcakes that we transformed into buns.  Living with flair means I learn to be a little gourmet.

PS:  Folks have asked for the recipe, and I actually didn’t find a real recipe–I improvised from a picture I found here.
Here are the ingredients: 
1 box vanilla cake mix
1box chocolate cake mix
Sesame seeds
Frosting colored yellow and red

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  3. This is wonderful and the first time I have had the pleasure of reading Living with Flair. I will be back often. Cool idea too. . .hamburger cupcakes!

  6. “Little things matter and accumulate on the landscape of a child's soul.” What an incredible quote… Laurie

  9. Not everyone is born with the creative gene, no matter how much we might wish we were, but there is nothing at all wrong with following someone else's recipe for creativity! In fact, I see it as a compliment, a tip of the hat to the person who came up with the idea in the beginning.

    Those are amazingly real-looking! Well done.

  10. Er, I should qualify my previous comment, in cases of copyright . . .

    Also wanted to say that I like the word verification change which makes commenting a one-step process now 🙂

  11. Happiness Here: I just edited the post and pasted the link to the picture I found. I couldn't find any recipe–I actually just improvised from the picture and baked the cupcakes according to the box!

  13. You not only made cupcakes, you made beautiful memories! Your daughters are blessed to have such a wonderful mother.

  14. Great job, Mom! My husband baked simple chocolate chip cookies with a secret ingredient that the kids would never divulge to me all through their school years. We STILL have the tin container that went back and forth on many bus rides. I refuse to pitch it. They had SO much fun and it constantly reiterated to me what a good man he was!