Cupcakes, cupcakes, sweet cakes for all!

Part of becoming an adult is realizing that certain holidays are terrible and only exist to make you spend money and feel bad about yourself.  Valentine's Day is so crappy I'm already sick of Anti-Valentine's Day celebrations. This year I actually seem to have bewitched somebody with my feminine wiles, and I still have no Valentine's Day enthusiasm.  Hopeless romantic that I am, I've made sure to mention that I don't like chocolate or stupid teddy bears (which makes one wonder if one is being presumptuous or pushy, but then one remembers that is basically how one rolls).  I have much more enthusiasm about buying cheap classroom Valentines, taping Dum-Dums to them, and changing the caption to "Happy Valentine's Day, Sucker!" or "Happy Valentine's Day, Dum-Dum!"

But if there are seasonal muffin cups and Funfetti frosting, I will make dessert items for it.  If we had but world enough and time, I would probably be making this stupid cake.  Of course, I would never be able to get the overlapping thing right and my handwriting is abysmal.  And apparently fondant tastes bad, and I have no strategy for getting rid of this hypothetical cake.

Given my inability to figure out that typically cakes are consumed, it probably won't surprise you to know that I managed to acquire four boxes of cake mix.  (If you're wondering how to tell if the Food Addict or the Food Pusher is doing the baking, count how many boxes of cake mix are on hand.  If the answer is more than 1, it's the Food Pusher)

Obviously that means it's time to bring Valentine's cupcakes to people.  Not because I feel anything for them, but because I have too many damn boxes of cake mix.  And I may have bought both large and small cupcake wrappers.

Here's the group that went to karate class on Monday night, sitting in my new Wilton cupcake carrier.  Notice the time taken to melt the frosting in the microwave and to draw hearts on some of them with writing icing.

Another group went to classes on Tuesday.  That was how I learned that the cupcake carrier must remain completely level at all times or the cupcakes will fall over.  Hungry grad students will eat them anyway.

The Monday/Tuesday cupcakes were all lemon cake with vanilla frosting.  By Thursday I decided that frosting took too much effort.  As did cleaning the frosting and sprinkle encrusted cupcake carrier.

If you bring starving grad students and karate scholars unfrosted cupcakes, they'll eat those too.

One box of cake mix will make at least 72 mini cupcakes.  I could probably have made a few more, but ditched the last of the batter.  Which is wasteful, but in my defense, I already had 72 cupcakes.