A New Tradition

I made this cake pretty hurriedly yesterday afternoon. We had an appointment in the morning and then an early dinner with Kevin’s family, so I had a small baking window in the afternoon and I was all business. After tersely measuring, sifting, beating and pouring, I tucked the batter-filled cake pans into the oven and set about the task of cleaning up after myself (the worst part of baking, by far). Somewhere between clearing the counter of a cloud of cocoa and flour and returning the ingredients to their resting spots in the cupboard, smells began to waft from the oven.

It was the kind of aroma that stopped me dead in my tracks, and not just because I’m a sucker for all things warm and chocolate. No, this particular scent snapped me out of all-business mode and transported me back in time, to a year ago almost to the date. As I’ve already written on this site, I made cupcakes for our wedding, which was last August 11, one year ago today. I made this mini-cake version of the cupcakes yesterday, to celebrate our anniversary, and the chocolately oven emanations had me recalling the last time I’d made the cakes, in the same corner of our kitchen, on the eve of our wedding.

(Click “more” for the rest of the story, the recipes and some wedding photos.)

Photo by S1 Photography

Yesterday was actually a day full of memory lane-ing (one my very favorite pastimes). That early morning appointment was with our wedding photographer, the amazingly talented Oscar, to plot out our (very belated) album. During our meeting, Oscar delighted us with a slideshow of photos from our wedding and it felt a little bit like reliving the day. We savored some memories that we re-visit often—the look of sheer terror on Kevin’s mother’s face as she was hoisted into the air during the horah (even after my step-father, a horah novice, went all look-ma-no-hands during his spin on the lofted chairs); the lone tear that spilled over while I read my vows to Kevin; the incredible heat of the night that seemed only to fuel the party, rather than sending everyone to the nearest oscillating fan; being showered with incredible words of love and laughter by our parents, my sister and Kevin’s best man, Seth; boogey-ing like our dancing shoes would be lost forever at the stroke of midnight.

But, maybe even better, the slideshow also unearthed some memories that had already gotten fuzzy in the shuffle of time. One of those was directly linked to the cupcakes I baked the day before our wedding and iced the very morning of our wedding—and then baked again yesterday. I had nearly forgotten that during the all-important cake cutting moment, Kevin took his fork, sunk it into a cupcake, carved out a hefty bite, and lifted it up for the first bite. His first bite. Not mine. Oh, no. He eschewed the traditional feed-your-bride tradition and went ahead and chowed right on down. Here was my reaction:

Photo by S1 Photography

What can I say? The man is a good eater—just one of the many, many reasons why I love him. As the wave of baked deep chocolate smells washed over me yesterday, I thought about some of the other reasons, about some of my favorite moments from this weekend one year ago, and about the future: the year after year that I’ll be able to bake some version of these cakes in celebration of our anniversary. Delicious thoughts, all.

Click here for the Chocolate Espresso Cupcakes with Bailey’s Buttercream recipes. For the mini-cake pictured in this post, I halved the recipe and made three small (4 3/4″) cakes, which I baked for 20 minutes. I had about four cupcakes worth of batter leftover. I also halved the buttercream recipe.