En guise d'introduction...

Welcome to my blog, a blog dedicated to my love of inventive baking endeavours, intricate cake decoration, and above all, to my passion for creating tempting treats for my friends and family. If T.S Eliot's Prufrock claimed to measure out his meagre life in coffee spoons, I believe my existence could well be quantified by the numerous measuring cups of flour, sugar and cocoa that I sift and stir each week in pursuit of baking perfection.

Mini Easter cupcakes - I am convinced there is a cupcake for almost every occasion!

In particular, this blog will celebrate my deep appreciation of the miniature mouthful of sweet seduction that is the cupcake. For me, the cupcake represents the epitome of cake itself, the last word in gulity pleasure, petite enough to justify repeated indulgence, yet dense enough to evoke an enticing palette of sensual pleasures, from contrasting textures in every savoured mouthful (the crunch of roasted nuts, the moist fudginess of warm cake crumb, the sticky sweetness of fluffy frosting), to the infinite array of flavours (the comfortingly familliar aroma of vanilla, the rich depth of cocoa, and the more exotic and elusive hints of citrus and aromatic spices).

Indeed, what the cupcake might lack in the grandeur of its scale, it decidedly makes up for in the creative scope that it offers a home baking and decorating enthusiast such as myself, providing the perfect edible canvas for exquisite embellishment and creative flavour combinatations. But above all, my affection for the cupcake lies in its diversity of social and even medicinal functions, from cheering the depressed and consoling the recently broken-hearted to comforting the sick and congratulating the well. As my closest friends and family will attest, I am virtually never seen without my signature tupperware containers full of cupcakes, ready to dispense my latest creations.

My friends are a most appreciative cupcake tasting focus group!

One of my infamous tupperware containers being put to good use...

This blog will document some of my baking adventures in the pursuit of new and enticing flavours and decoration ideas, with a sprinkling of my own cupcake-related anecdotes and the occasional flavoursome interlude from my other creative pursuits as well as from my day-time incarnation as a medical student...

I will end this post by stating that the idea of writing a blog has always struck me as an intensely self-indulgent pursuit...(*self-reflexive silence*)...however, I hope that the self-indulgent nature of this blog will be somewhat mitigated if the recipes and ideas I provide inspire anyone else to indulge themselves in less verbose and more delicious pleasures!

xx Anne