By Maya van B.                                                

When I was small
For birthdays 
My mom always had cherry cupcakes
Made from a box mix, eggs and oil
and poured into pretty pink wrappers
that we kept in the cupboard
and never seemed to run out of
She topped them with homemade icing
dyed my three favourite colours
Always three 
never more, never less
It doesn’t matter how much time passes
the artificial cherry flavour will always taste like seven years old
Reminiscent of blue smiles stained from the dye
It will always mean dead grass and August sun
standing barefoot in the backyard
and burning our feet on the black asphalt
of the lazy afternoon street
It will always taste like melted smarties and missing teeth,
party hat strings that snapped against small faces
leaving red marks along the sunburns and smile lines
We don’t bake them much anymore
Life is more complicated 
Work and school
Places and people
We move back and forth in the spaces
Food becomes food
It means less than nothing
It doesn’t hold the same meaning
of little pink cakes
There’s something about the simplicity 
of the time or the treat
I can’t quite separate
one from the other anymore
Each passing year
adds another step to the recipe

Cherry Cupcakes & Buttercream Icing

Ingredients:
- Box mix
- 1 cup milk
- ⅓ cup oil
- 4 eggs
- 1 ½ cups butter
- 4 cups icing sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
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1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Prepare muffin pan with cupcake wrappers, or grease pan. Add to a large bowl cake Mix, milk, oil and eggs, and beat with a mixer or fork for 2 minutes. Pour a large spoonful of batter into each cupcake. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting.
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2. With a mixer, beat butter until smooth, then reduce speed, adding sugar, a ½ cup at a time, beat after each addition. Add vanilla and beat until smooth. Separate into containers and add colouring.