I believe that things come into your life for a reason, and they also leave for a reason.  I recently finished Alyssa Shelasky’s Apron Anxiety, and it is responsible for me believing in the power of baking again to heal what ails me and to soothe the noise that deafens me sometimes.  She reminded me why I loved baking so much in the first place — the solace and comfort of following a recipe and knowing that you will get exactly as you give when you follow the instructions and measurements.  Unlike life, you will be guaranteed something good for your efforts.  I need some of that good predictability in my life right now.  Speaking of predictability, it was also through reading this book that I found the following quote by Gilda Radner:

“I wanted a perfect ending.  Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end.  Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.  Delicious Ambiguity.”

The book only had part of the quote but I googled and found the full quote.

Anyway, I know you just want me to get to the good stuff so here it is, last night’s labor of love:

I figured I’d let you guys drool over the pictures first.  These are red velvet cheesecake swirl cupcakes.  I used my recipe for red velvet cake, which was adapted from Paula Deen’s red velvet cake recipe.  I’m going to take some of these to work tomorrow, because my boss has been passive-aggressively (but in a nice way) hinting at how long it’s been since I’ve baked anything for them.  Hell, even I can’t remember.

These were inspired by reading Shelasky’s book, at a part where she was talking about making a cheesecake.  The red velvet part came to me probably because lately I have been thinking a lot about love and well, what color represents love more than red?  I initially thought to make a red velvet cheesecake but I can’t be bothered with putting together a water bath for it and felt like cupcakes are always more easily transportable and practical.  Perhaps the red velvet cheesecake will be a holiday experiment.