that clever simon was selling his lamps at kirribilli art and design markets today, so i bribed the kid with the promise of a cupcake and away we went.

coming out of milsons point station, we took two right turns in the direction of the colonial bakery (as documented by grab your fork) and came face to face with the cold, harsh reality of silver-shuttered windows.

the colonial bakery, folks, closed on sundays.

the kid was understandably dismayed, and truly, so was i. i’d been looking forward to an olde time cupcake (or a cream lamington) eaten on the bowling green. but the grumbling and pleading was only at a low level for now, so we made our way through the burton street tunnel, almost pretending to look at the crafty wares on display as we headed towards the foodstalls at the other end. at some point i gazed over at the other aisle, ostensibly looking for alien lamp pods, but what came into my line of sight was a three-tiered tray laden with tiny cupcakes. well, at that distance i couldn’t be certain, but i said it anyway: “LOOK! CUPCAKES!” before we continued our mosey at a slightly quicker pace. i sure hoped it wasn’t novelty soaps.

and it wasn’t! it was a table covered in actual palm beach cupcakes, every single one of them a lovely and elegant affair. the kid was immediately drawn to the big cupcake covered in pink frosting and a marshmallow flower with a little chocolate button in its centre. i really liked the look of the cake stand: three levels of bite-sized chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting (two shades!), or chocolate, or speckled-cookies and-cream.

“what is the difference between the darker pink and the lighter pink?” i asked.

“they are essentially the same chocolate and raspberry cupcake, but the darker ones have more raspberry,” was the helpful reply.

so i got one of each. delicious, and the darker one was more delicious than the other. the frosting was quite sugary, but the tartness of the raspberries balanced it out. the cake itself had a texture i had not yet encountered in a cupcake. dryish (though not unpleasantly so) with a dense but fine crumb and a deep chocolatey flavour. the frosting-to-cake ratio was about one-to-one, which is the way it should be, no?

the kid was methodical. she picked out the chocolate button, then ate the marshmallow flower, then the frosting, and then finally, the cake. not even half the cake, actually, which when i did try, surprised me with the raspberries baked all the way through, and its, hmm… slightly muffin-like texture. hmm. it tasted healthy, is what it was. that said, i was not lucky enough to eat it with frosting, so clearly, i will have to continue my study in a month.

we chased the cake with a mandarin, and then after a short wander, a bag of farm-fresh strawberries from a stall in the clearing, and then a fat sausage in a roll, and then an apple for the kid, and a laze on a sunny-shady patch of grass. and then we felt ready for another cupcake.

by this time — an hour to closing — the mini cupcakes had been reduced to $1 (from $1.50) and the regular ones $2.50 (from $3.80). you could even buy a tray of 12 assorted minis for ten bucks. and oh, how i wanted to! but instead, it was little chocolate-raspberry cupcakes all ’round, and they were just as good as we remembered them.

the luminous objects were lovely, and i was quite drawn to the bornagain books, but i didn’t end up buying any art or design. instead, having discovered that the bread merchant on these sunday markets is brasserie bread — sold out before he even had a chance to fully unpack his bounty of loaves — what came home with me, wrapped in swirly-printed tissue, was a tender sour cherry-rye-sourdough.

breakfast tomorrow is gonna be great!