there was a brief moment on friday, as i walked down the crap end of pitt street with a box of cupcakes in my hand and central station rising up before me, when i thought i was in new york. sure, it was the crap bit of midtown manhattan that flashed through my head, but i was there, man.

how distant that moment is now, with me sitting here eating vegemite toast much too quickly, stealing minutes to blog in between too many jobs that involve fitting too much text into too small a page.

but, friday. cupcakes. rewind. << i'd been wanting to go to cupcakes on pitt for months and months, even before reading about saffron’s happy adventure back in november. but somehow i never got to the city before closing time, or i was never in that part of the city, or i just, um, forgot. but, friday. cupcakes on pitt just happened to be on the way to where i needed to be (the department of immigation).

it was like it was meant to be: the boy was off sick from work, the child was having her nap at home, the buses conspired to run off-schedule… and one of the two little tables in the shop was empty. there is a cupcake and coffee deal for $5 (cupcakes $3.50 each), so i had a latte, even though i’d given up coffee again. as for the cupcake…

how long does it take you to choose a cupcake? is there a length of time, after which it becomes embarrassing (or just freakish) to stand swaying before a display of eight-ish frosted beauties, trying to pick the one that will be just right? in the end, the classic combination of pink and brown won. the smiley counter girl brought it over, my chocolate cupcake with strawberry frosting. it was a bold, pretty thing, and when i turned it around, i discovered its deformity: a overhang of cake where it had risen unevenly in the baking tray. i was delighted, because… well, more cake. but that countergirl, did she know something about me? spooky.

i tried to make it last, but the cake was so light and moist and chocolatey and the frosting… see, i like the idea of twice as much frosting, but i’m thankful that they took the sensible route here; it was quite buttery, with a delicate strawberry flavour. and no doubt you would have noted the generous curls of good dark chocolate perched so jauntily on the top. it was really good, and just the right, sensible size.

it was so tasty that later, faced with the decision all over again for takeaway cupcakes, i eschewed the white chocolate cupcake, the dark chocolate cupcake, the plain chocolate, the jaffa on chocolate, the strawberry on vanilla, the passionfruit, the cappuccino, and picked the chocolate with strawberry frosting again. the cupcakes here are a flavoured frosting on either a vanilla or chocolate cake base (which saved my brain from imploding while trying to decide frosting as well as cake flavours), so i thought it would be good for the survey to also pick a vanilla one. this ended up being the lemon cupcake, topped with a modest swirl of baked meringue.

[ i have this fantasy of buying a slice of foot-high lemon meringue pie whenever i pass one by in a cafe window; it always seems like way too much meringue, though i suspect i would eat it all, and perhaps regret it, maybe.]

i wondered if there might be a dab of lemon curd beneath the meringue, and cutting into it when i got home, i discovered that there was. hurrah!