HAVE A CUPCAKE AND A SMILE

There's something about a cupcake that always makes me smile-they're just the right size and the perfect mix of cake and icing in one tidy, delicious package. Manhattan has become awash in cupcakes with delicious homey offerings on nearly every corner: Billy's, Magnolia Bakery, Crumbs, Cupcake Cafe, Sugar Sweet Sunshine and Buttercup Bakery all have a cult like following, and with good reason-they are really good. Everyone seems to have their favorite-mine is a perfect red velvet from Buttercup Cafe on Second Avenue. Dangerously close to home and work, I have to make sure that I don't walk within a three block radius of the shop on an empty stomach, otherwise I'm sure to be sidling up to the counter to pick up a few cupcakes "for the kids."

Today is my daughter's school birthday party and we are bringing in cupcakes. I was ready to call Buttercup Bakery (how can you go wrong with a name like buttercup?) but I was stopped in my tracks when my first grader told me she wanted homemade. Ok. I was imagining the hours in my kitchen ahead of me, making a batch of scratch vanilla cupcakes as dry as dust, when she told me that what she really wanted was tie dyed frosted cupcakes. Yes, I can do that! I bought a box of mix, which I convinced myself was quasi homemade when I added a stick of butter and extra vanilla to the mix and made a quick vanilla butter cream frosting. A few carefully place drops of food coloring in the icing and some gentle mixing produced a groovy, psychedelic wonder. Where they as good as Buttercup Bakery? To her, they were better.