Abby outdid herself once again

Abby outdid herself once again with a Kentucky Derby barbeque on Saturday, where she filled up an entire kitchen with tiny corn muffins, beer cheese, little cups of ambrosia, mint juleps, and red velvet cupcakes. Actually red and blue velvet cupcakes.

As I mentioned before, Abby is going to be our baker for the wedding and is going to create a tower of red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for the reception. This party was the perfect chance for her to try out two competing recipes and pit them against one another before a gaggle of hungry judges. With competitiveness in the air from the horse races, it seemed an ideal venue to test the two recipes. (Unfortunately, we didn’t think to place bets until it was too late.)

To differentiate the two recipes, she made one batch with the traditional red food coloring, and one with blue. (Did you know the only thing that makes red velvet cake red is red food coloring? It is.) The Cake Man’s recipe (red, made with oil) was a favorite to win, but in a surprise push from the dark horse, the blue cupcake (made with butter) pulled ahead and won the race.

There was something very touching about the blue cupcakes, made only for the sake of improving a recipe by degrees. Of my very close friends, I’m one of the first who will have a wedding in a rented space with catered food and a professional bar. The rest have been these very beautiful family affairs in parks, and new homes, and grandparents’ hand built houses. There is homemade lasagna more often than not, and a wine station manned by a cousin or friend of the families. Doing the wedding in New York—with small spaces, little kitchens, and lack of friends with cars—sort of limits what we’re able to do on our own. Yet we’ve made a big effort. Friends are doing flowers, music, and photography; I don’t feel like it’s an event being planned out of someone else’s hand.

As we stood in the kitchen with the grill fired up in the night outside, attacking cupcakes with a spare butter knife to divvy them up to tasters, tipsy with mint juleps and orange blossom beer, I thought briefly about our taste testing a couple months ago for the wedding hors d'oeuvres. It was a very tasteful affair at the caterer’s place in the middle of the afternoon with my parents. She brought us out different plates of goodies and we all sat around with cloth napkins and goblets of water, picking out the very best things to serve. There were serving platters, silverware, and a tablecloth. And though everything was very good, I see now that there will always be something—the blue cupcake factor, if you will—missing from a caterer, and I am even more happy to have that little bit of extra friend help in the food.

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