Why I love holidays: The treat selections at bakeries double in size.

Fourth of July? Get your red, white and blue cookies here. Halloween? Orange- and brown-hued blondies. And St. Patrick’s Day – walk into any bakery, and you’ll find green in all shades: Mint chocolate brownies. Pistachio sugar cookies. Moss-green velvet cupcakes.

The latter are what caught my eye during an optometrist visit. I chose him not by his stellar credentials (though I’m sure he has them), but by what restaurants were near his office: Thai food, Vietnamese and the Layer Cake Bakery, where these moist, lovely cupcakes lived.

I normally hesitate when buying baked goods because as we bakers know, we can make them for a fraction of the purchase cost. But these seemed to speak to some deep-rooted carnal urge I have that rears its head at the sight of something uber-delicious. I’m an animal. I bought 12.

At $2.75 a pop – for a regular-sized cupcake, nonetheless – this is pretty steep. Sprinkles, which charges $3.25 per cupcake, at least tries to justify its price with a bigger one. And it’s highway robbery when you consider that baking them costs roughly less than $5 for a whole dozen. (And here we are, smack in a recession, and I’m dropping more than $30 on cupcakes. Eeegad.)

But we bakers have to admit: It’s nice to hang up your apron once in a great while to enjoy something someone else has made. In this case, I lucked out even more: These cupcakes were made by a woman I had attended culinary school with, who had a flawless reputation for her baking. But I didn’t need to know that. The airy cream cheese frosting and fluffy, rich cake speak for themselves.

Layer Cake Bakery, 4250 Barranca Parkway, Irvine, Calif. 949-786-0223. www.layercakebakery.com

– Cynthia Furey

Side note: March Madness is a month-long challenge in which I will attempt to post Monday through Friday for the entire month. Thank you for reading!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 7:04 pm and is filed under At the table, Restaurants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.