Cupcakes of Shame

Yesterday, Guy and I joined a church. After the service, they had a potluck for all the people who have joined in the past 12 months. I love a church potluck.

We signed up to bring dessert.

Saturday night, Lovely and I set out to make our Black Bottom Cupcakes. We have our own little system for division of duties, and can whip out a batch in no time now. She is in charge of the cream cheese filling, and I am in charge of the chocolate cake part. These rich, dark chocolate cupcakes with a cream cheese and chocolate chip filling don't last long around our house.

These cupcakes have been one of my favorites since I was a child and my momma would send them in my lunch box. It never occurred to me that they look a little funny.

Until yesterday.

Now, a potluck is more than just a potluck where I come from. It's almost a cooking or baking competition in it's own rite. Women, and some of the men, pull out all the punches to make sure that they are taking an empty dish home with them. That their dish is the one that has been scraped clean and then peered longingly into by the ones who took too long to go get their seconds.

So when it was time to leave and I went to collect my plate, I don't have to describe my horror when there were only 2 cupcakes missing off of that platter. One that Lovely ate. And one that Guy ate.

Perhaps I can blame it on pregnancy hormones, but I actually cried. A little. I couldn't help it.

Lovely insists that if just one person had eaten a cupcake besides our family, that they would have been gone. She said that they wouldn't have been able to stop themselves from telling everyone how fantastic they were, and that there would have been a mad rush for the cupcakes at that point and none would be left.

I think she was only a little disappointed. Because after all, we were taking home a couple dozen of our favorite cupcakes. Ones that we didn't have to share now.

Nevertheless, I'm thinking of changing the name of the cupcake to The Cupcake of Shame.

I have failed my first potluck at the new church.

I should have just made a pound cake.