Saturday morning cupcakes

I don't subscribe to the old philosophy that dessert is only for after dinner. There are times when something sweet can get your day started off right. Think about waffles - all that maple syrup and carb loaded goodness has as much sugar as a brownie, I think.

So I kicked off a new tradition in our house today with Saturday morning cupcakes. The purpose to baking cupcakes early on a Saturday morning (there is no such thing as sleeping in anymore with a kid and a dog) is really about the time spent in the kitchen with my son. I'm working hard to include him in things I prepare. It is helping his math skills, his ability to follow directions, and best of all, our time together is doing something that we both enjoy. He is my expert at cracking eggs and he is learning how to juice lemons with an old lemon press. So, Saturday morning baking is about fun. And nothing says fun like cupcakes - especially if you get to eat one while snuggled on the couch under an old madras blanket watching cartoons with your mom. I don't know how many more years I'll get until he decides he is too cool to watch Scooby Doo with me, licking frosting off a cupcake at 10:30 in the morning, but I'm treasuring every single Saturday until then.

We're still looking for a "perfect" cupcake recipe - today's batch were a little too heavy for my liking - so I'll be cruising the blogs looking for a good candidate for next week. We went with vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream frosting this time around. Next week, I'll load up on food dye and we'll make colored frosting and apple flavored cupcakes. But even if our cupcakes aren't ready for Martha Stewart, Saturday morning makes them the best treat of the week.