mmm cupcakes

One of my oldest friends – actually, the oldest, she’s a week older than me and I’ve known her since birth – has been back in the Smoke this week from Oop North, after ending a relationship after six and a half years. The other night was “cheer L up” night; along with another friend [with whom we formed an inseparable trio at primary school] we decided to bake cupcakes, as when they’d visited me in NY I’d taken them to Sugar Sweet Sunshine where, over mouth-wateringly amazing cupcakes, we’d discussed how we’d bring the cupcake revolution to London someday.

So back to present day, and we’re in A’s new apartment [that she’s just bought], in the process of trying to induce sugar comas by making Magnolia-recipe cupcakes and frosting [with a liberal “some frosting for the cake, some straight in my mouth” policy]. And I’m thinking, here we are, mid-20s, dealing with two adult topics – mortgages and buying a place [A], and the most significant relationship in L’s adult life ending. The kind of things Adults talk about. But then we’re also playing around with food colouring and discussing how the new Smarties look rubbish and being messy – and generally acting pretty similar to how we did when we were 8, let’s face it.

And by the time the cupcakes are actually finally done, cooked, cooled, frosted and decorated, we all felt so roundly sick from picking at the frosting and Smarties lying around that no one could even stomach one. So we left A. to try and fob them off on her roommate, while we took some back for our families, relishing the walk home over the bridge to try and burn off some of the sugar. Not that it actually worked of course, and I got home at 11:30pm with a sugar-high like 5 year old let loose in a sweet shop.