“Over the previous few weeks, I'd finally perfected the Julia St. Clair wedding cupcake: classic lemon cake with a hidden heart of my mom's boldly flavoured passion fruit filling, slathered high with Julia's favorite vanilla buttercream icing and glammed up a bit with sparkling curls of candied lemon rind.”

“If life wanted to hand me lemons I was not only going to make lemonade, but I'd use the zest for cookies, plant seeds for future fruit and turn the rind into compost to grow flowers, all the while giving thanks for lemons.”

“I had, I'll admit, effected a certain style - a method, if you will - of cupcake eating. To begin, you remove the cupcake liner carefully so as not to unnecessarily crumble the cake, and set it aside. You then turn the cupcake slowly in your hand, taking bites along the line where cake meets icing, your mouth filling with a perfect combination of both components. Once you've come full circle, you gently twist off the bottom half inch of cake, a move that takes considerable finesse and leaves a delicate sliver of cake - the ideal size for lying flat on your tongue and allowing it to slowly dissolve, building anticipation for that final bite. To finish, you are left with the center cylinder of cake and icing, the cupcake's very heart, sometimes filled with a surprising burst of custard or jam or mousse, sometimes not, but always, always, the most moist, flavorful bite of the entire cupcake. Take a breath before diving into that final, perfect bite; it is to be savored for as long as possible. Finally, of course, you scavenge the crumbs from the cupcake liner you set aside during step one, then ball the liner into your fist and overhand it into the nearest receptacle. Make the shot? You get another cupcake.”

“So the freshness lives onin a lemon,in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,the proportions, arcane and acerb.”

“I like ice cream with my cake. But in moderation, and not like five gallons with a cupcake. For that much ice cream, I’d need at least two cupcakes.”

“and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks.”