One of the benefits of working in an office is the camaraderie many of us share. In our office we make a point of celebrating each other's birthdays. Our office has a small staff of four and a large staff of volunteers, most of which work only one day a week. They accomplish a tremendous amount of work in just one day and the staff is always thrilled to discover a volunteer's birthday so we can bring in a cake and celebrate. If its a particularly special birthday (and we have a lot of age 80 or 90 plus birthdays to celebrate) a large number of volunteers stop by just for the celebration.
The staff shares bringing in the cake. One of the staff brings in a really wonderful cake from a bakery in the greater Dayton area. Everyone loves these cakes. I usually try to bake a cake my self and my dark chocolate sheet cake is the most popular (see the recipe in my March 31st posting). One time I baked the sheet cake recipe as cupcakes. They were a big hit with everyone who tried them and the recipe made a huge amount of cupcakes and being cupcakes it was easy to share them around. I took some to work and distributed the rest among my parents and siblings' household. Everyone loved those cupcakes which were just simple dark chocolate with chocolate icing, nothing fancy.
A staff member was recently celebrating her birthday and I promised to bring cupcakes. As too often happens I ran out of time and skipped across the street to the cupcake cafe and purchased a dozen of their wonderful fancy, filled cupcakes. You can buy them in three sizes and I can bake an entire sheet cake for what one of their larger ones costs, but they are so good and so special, I just have to have one now and then.
The surprising thing was that the cupcakes were not as well received as I'd hoped. The men liked them fine, but men generally like any good baked good. The women on the other hand were more picky. Several didn't like the fact that there was raspberry filling in the cupcakes. Others didn't think the cake part of the cupcake was so good. Somehow they had been expecting my home made cupcakes and just couldn't get past that thought. No one expressed this outright, but it was implied. The result was I had left over cupcakes. I didn't want to eat them all myself - though I could have, in one sitting, no problem. So, I did the good daughter thing and took them to my parents. No problem with them liking the cupcakes!
My 88 year old father is happy to have cake of any kind everyday. My 80 year old mother is happy to have a break from baking. My outrageous cupcake spend was justified.
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