Not even Europe can stop me...

....from making cupcakes.

Above, left, let's pretend like I know how to focus a camera. Right, not pictured is my twelve-year old cousin making fun of me for pulling out a plate at ten pm to take another picture.

Happy Fourth of July! On this day last year, Aja ate eleven cupcakes off the counter, wrappers and all. In honor of all the red and blue food coloring that went to waste - and her survival - I decided to celebrate by introducing my Austrian relatives to my dog's favorite confection.

Unlike in every state in the continental US, the cupcake craze hasn't really caught on in Austria, and it's rare for a house to even have a muffin tin. In Paris, I saw both a cupcake boutique and a frozen yogurt joint, but here, the closest thing you'll get is a fancy chocolate cupcake from an upscale konditorei that charges far too much, and joghurt- or topfen-flavored gelatos, which are divine in their own right (and cost far less than a Berry Yogurt Pun Cup). In the baked goods department, what's really big are macaroons, which come in millions of flavors and color combinations, torte (which just means cake, and doesn't necessarily refer to the infamous Sachertorte, which features enough chocolate to kill a racehorse), and anything made with mohn (poppy seeds, which instead of being processed into heroin, find their way into pastries; hence the vast cultural differences between Austria and, say, Russia). Other popular ingredients that crop up a lot are apricots (marillen), topfen (a kind of sweet white cheese, like a cross between cottage cheese and yoghurt), and hazelnut. I think a preference for these flavors is built into my DNA, because I've been in nut-heaven - last week I tried chestnut-flavored gelato for the first time, and oh, my god, nearly died.... but I will write about gelato some other time. This post is supposed to be about cupcakes.

Since my aunt is the only person in the entire dorf who has muffin tins, I decided to introduce the family to the glory that is a miniature dose of killer cake. Ordinarily I would go out of my way to make something ridiculously exotic - like a fruit cupcake with a curd filling and matching herbal icing with some plant on top; go hard or go home, I always say - but I was somewhat limited by the fact that grocery stores aren't open twenty-four hours a day (usually they close at seven), and that Buddha's hand is only available at the Nashmarkt (yet another thing about which I have neglected to write).

After spending an hour last night agonizing over which flavor to make, we ultimately decided on old-fashioned chocolate cupcakes with pear filling, vanilla buttercream, and a cute baked pear slice on top.

Freshly flipped over from being cooled on the oven rack. I kinda like how they look grilled, and now I really want to give grilled cupcakes a shot....
	Ordinarily I would both be trying to wield the spoons and the camera simultaneously. Thankfully, my cousin helped me put these cupcakes together - here, she adds the pear filling to the middle of a scooped-out cupcake whose top is soon to be replaced. (This is called the cone method of piping fillings.)

We woke up at seven the next morning to bake (I actually woke up at five to put the butter and eggs out  - devotion, or madness?), and then hopped on our bicycles to deliver half a dozen to one of my aunts in the next town over. Had we left even a half hour later, the mere thought of going outside would have given us heatstroke. It's lucky we left when we did, though, because the cupcakes were a hit! My uncle ate three all by himself, and the rest of us were hardly saints.

Tomorrow: a more substantive post, featuring 60% fewer run-on sentences, 80% less German jargon, and consistent spelling of the word yoghurt.