Three Beautiful Things Thursday
The right cupcake-to-frosting ratio. The frosting should not overpower the cake. Period. I don’t agree that the cake part of a cupcake is simply a vehicle for transporting the frosting to your mouth. I think the cake is the true star of the cupcake, and the frosting is its little black dress.
Sadly I haven’t really found a cupcake shop in Atlanta that understands the ratio (perhaps the now-defunct Chocolate Pink, but I didn’t care much for most of their cupcakes in general), but last week in D.C. Georgetown Cupcakes reminded me just how good a cupcake can be. The ratio is one of the things Georgetown Cupcakes does best — instead of constructing a multi-inch frosting monument on top of a cakey base, they do a simple swirl, just enough to add a little bit of richness and sugar but not so much as to induce an immediate onset of diabetes.
On a related note, Shereen, who absolutely agrees with me about the cupcake-to-frosting ratio, planted an idea in my head last week that won’t go away, even though every time I think it I run away screaming: she wants us to try out for Cupcake Wars, the Food Network reality show where teams bake cupcakes under various constraints (usually time and ingredient/theme). She said she doesn’t have the courage to do it alone… neither do I, but I’m not even sure I have the courage to do it with her! Unlike most of the other contestants on that show, we don’t own a business together, so we’d have to practice for a while to get our recipes and methods in synch. That would be the easy part. The hard part would be not melting down in front of the producers and cameras. I’m not afraid of losing. I’m just afraid of the 100% chance I’d make a total idiot out of myself.
Words With Friends Alicia recommended I install this app on my iPhone earlier this year as an indulgence to my love for Scrabble. I started out playing with only Alicia and Shannon, but that was before I discovered just how many people are addicted to this electronic Scrabble-knock-off. Today I have eight games going with friends and family, some with elaborately tight boards and some with sprawl reminiscent of metro Atlanta (and yet nary a spot to place a word). I love being able to take my time about building a word and also always having at least a game or two going on. Words With Friends lets you play some crazy words — two days ago Mansoor played “usque”, which doesn’t appear on Dictionary.com but Wiktionary.com tells me it’s a Irish and Scots Gaelic version of “whiskey” — so the more I play, the more I expand my in-person Scrabble arsenal (did you know “coz” is an acceptable word in both WWF and Scrabble?). I love this game that lets me get my Scrabble fix on a daily basis.
Scoutmob Every day this local Atlanta start-up emails me a smart, well-written introduction to an area restaurant or small business. Some, like Murphy’s, Scoutmob’s inaugural “find”, I’m old friends with, but there are others, like Urban Pl8, that I’d never heard of and probably have avoided based on destruction of the English language alone had Scoutmob’s review not convinced me to check out their menu.
Unlike Groupon, though, Scoutmob doesn’t make you buy the coupon in advance. You simply present it at checkout time (if you remember, that is is like — after Thanksgiving, Heather, Leta, and I went to Varasno’s because of the Scoutmob discount but we totally forgot about the coupon until after we’d already paid the bill) and the bill is reduced accordingly. I love this, and even more I love the iPhone app that lets me carry Scoutmob and its discounts with me wherever I go.
What I love most, though, is finding new local non-chain places to try, like Anis Bistro and Cafe or Boogaloos Boutique, and supporting a new local startup while I’m at it. (Not sure where this new-found affection for Atlanta startups comes from, but I suspect the trail leads back to Shannon eventually.) As whiny as I’ve been about technology lately, it’s lovely to find some tech that really does make my horizons broader and my life a little bit richer.