Let Them Eat Cake!

In our house, whenever anything good happens, someone can be counted on to say,"Let's make a cake!"  And so we do.  This one prompted a happy sigh from DB, age four, who said "So many cakes, so little time!"

One of our favorite, stand-by, never-fail cakes is a variation on the sumptuous Magnolia Bakery cupcake recipe, topped with their incomparable vanilla butter cream icing, which for some reason always tastes best when it's pink.  With both the cake batter and the icing, we always go a little heavy on the vanilla. Just pour the cupcake batter into two greased 9 inch pans, bake 10 minutes longer, and voila!  You have cake. 

This recipe should come with a warning: it is absolutely irresistible and, given the volumes of butter and sugar involved, best suited to the under-12 crowd, marathon runners and those rare adults, like my husband, blessed with the metabolisms of hummingbirds.  That has not stopped me from eating many, many, MANY slices.

Ironically, Magnolia Bakery rose to fame via Sex And The City, where the girls frequently indulged in snappy dialogue and gobs of pastel icing as they sauntered outside the bakery, cupcakes in hand.  There must have been spit buckets off-camera.   

No matter.  It nourishes the soul.  Lose the scale, eat the cake.