I’ve subjected my kickball team to a lot of baking experiments over our four summers together. They’re the best at eating with one hand and catching with the other.

A little shoutout from yesterday’s New York Post:

“Crucial Taunt members said they played in a “lackadaisical” manner all day, tying the New Frontiersmen in a 1-1 stalemate and dropping the nightcap, despite Kate “Buttercream” Brown’s award-winning cupcakes as a pregame snack.

“The cupcakes have beer in them,” said Brown.

Not mentioned: the frosting had whiskey. Also please note that we hardly ever lose, this is a total anomaly. Crucial Taunt <3

To celebrate Mother’s Day, we thought outside the cupcake pan and used honey, lavender and fresh berries for a mother/child experiment. Here’s the mom: honey cake with blackberry lavender compote and vanilla buttercream.

And the baby: a honey cupcake topped with blackberry lavender buttercream.

Of course, our mail order system is a little shaky, so our moms can’t actually eat these. But when we’re chowing down, we’ll totally be thinking about them. Happy Mother’s Day!

We were in the lab this week, doing some research (eating) and development (eating) of new flavors for Spring. First out of the gate, an homage to green: pistachio cake with citrus zest. We sent these to our pal Betsy’s birthday party, with vanilla bean and dark chocolate buttercream and candied pistachios.

Someone told me it was “Elvis Week” on American Idol. Sure. Which got me thinking about the real (and totally incredible) Elvis Week in Tennessee. Every August, on the anniversary of his death, tens of thousands of fans gather in Memphis to commemorate The King. There are movie screenings, candlelight vigils, and the finals of the international Elvis Impersonator competition (obviously). This is serious stuff.

Once, inspired by Paul Simon, I skirted a term paper about religious pilgrimage by writing about Elvis Week. What I got was a lingering obsession with Graceland. One staple of the house was his grocery list— food that had to be stocked in the kitchen at all times. At the top was peanut butter, bananas and white bread. You know where this is going.

Here’s a picture (via cupcakestakethecake) from last year’s Brooklyn Cupcake Cookoff.

Banana cake with peanut butter filling, Southern Comfort frosting, honey roasted peanuts, and deep-friend banana slices. It’s the least I could do. Tickets for Elvis Week go on sale soon—plan your trip at www.elvisweek.com.

Important advances in cupcake-eating technology: we’ve been informed that some folks remove the bottom of the cake and smush it on top of the frosting, as demonstrated above with our chocolate cake. Behold, the poor man’s whoopie pie.

The blogs (almost all of them) are weighing in on Monday night’s event. NYPL posted photos, definitely worth a look. Jason Lam at Me So Hungry called our cakes “beautiful” and added:

Afterwards in the men’s room, Ezra Koenig commented, “ughh, I ate two cupcakes.” Well it was either him or his friend next to him. I almost joined in on the conversation, but realized that would be awkward because we were all taking a leak. Anyway, I think we all ate too many cupcakes.

Gonzo dessert journalism. Thanks for the shout-out. Over at the Voice’s Sound of the City blog, Zach Baron wonders whether Brown Paper Bag cupcakes are yet another reason to pretend-hate but secretly enjoy Vampire Weekend:

When the outraged masses finally rise up and slaughter Vampire Weekend for the sins of their Ivy League educations and crisply pressed pants, this room might well be Exhibit A—chocolate salted caramel buttercream, Bordeaux, Perrier, pineapple, and blood.

Um, thanks? Whatever. At least he was easier on us than that Titus Andronicus show.

Until last night, we’d made deliveries via car, bus, subway, and on foot. Now we know the best way to roll into a party is with pastry boxes stacked high on the shelves of an old wooden library cart. Obviously. Thanks to the New York Public Library, we got to push our cupcakes through the halls of the iconic Stephen A. Schwarzman building on the way to a forum featuring novelist John Wray and Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig.

We set up next to the bartenders (always set up next to the bartenders) and started handing out cupcakes to members of the Young Lions, a group of NYPL supporters. We went through 200 cupcakes in under 3 hours, a new Brown Paper Bag record! Congrats, everyone. It was a team effort.

Kate had a blast hanging out and helping people pick which flavor to have first (then second, then third). It’s finally Spring in New York, and Vampire Weekend’s Contra was playing on the stereo. Maybe she was dancing a little, what of it? Just when we thought it couldn’t get better,  John Wray declared our cupcakes better than Magnolia’s. Not bad for a Tuesday at the library.

(This is John Wray. He writes good books and has excellent taste.)

Today’s flavors.

Right now we’re getting a few batches ready for an event next Monday at the New York Public Library - Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig in conversation with author John Wray (sorry, private shindig). Meanwhile, we’ve been reading Wray’s Lowboy and enjoying it quite a bit. Here’s a passage we found particularly inspired:

…his left hand held a plain brown paper bag. The bag was rolled shut but Lowboy could tell what was in it. The smell was sweet and dank and unmistakable. The thing in the bag was a Jamaican beef patty.

You probably thought it was going to be cupcakes, right? So did we. But then, 35 pages later:

The wall behind the counter was graced by a menagerie of pastel forms. Green and pink clots cupped in pleated waxpaper. Green for her afterimage, pink for his skin. He could tell by her expression that she was inspecting them closely.

“This place only makes cupcakes,” she murmured.

Yes! Finally. Wray talks more about his love of cupcakes here.

Skyline.