Sorry for the silence (Marshall). Please, let us move through the excuses and on to what is really the most important issue at hand....
Birthdays! In particular, my little sister Abbie's birthday! With sincere regret in my heart, I could not be with her to celebrate, so I did the next best thing.
Yesterday as I was walking out of the apartment, I encountered my upstairs neighbor and his wife, with their hands full of silver mylar balloons complete with curled ribbons, pink and purple wrapping paper, and excited faces. They revealed to me that it was their granddaughter was turning five years old and would be honored that evening with a party fit for a princess.
These neighbors are a source of endless smiles for Matthias and me, as they are always quick to point out the delicious smells that come wafting upstairs from our apartment below. And remember those chocolate hazelnut spice cookies? They were so rich, that twenty of them were entirely too many to eat in a week, and so we gladly gifted some upstairs. (They have requested lasagna, or veal, but we have yet to grant those wishes. Please don't get me started on veal...).
I asked if they would like me to make cookies or cupcakes for their party and their faces lit up and they enthusiastically consented. 
And so, I set out to make cupcakes fit for a five year old little girl, with pressure for perfection, and a strange pang of longing to be five again once more with my gregarious little sister by my side. It was this nostalgia that led me to choose the recipe for Jamie Oliver's 'Tea-Party Cupcakes'. For you see, when we were small, one spring afternoon I very much wanted to have a tea-party, and several weeks before that, I had very much wanted my mom and dad to bring me a sister home from the hospital so that she could perform the role of guest at my very grand afternoon teas. My mom explained to me that Abbie was too small, but one day she would make a fabulous guest, and oh my goodness, what do you know? She wound up being my very best friend. So, it is on this April 26th that I give a five year old stranger, and my dearest wee sister the gift of tea parties and cupcakes and all other manner of little girl-ness so that they can both feel so delicate, because these tiny, lemony little cakes exemplify the word. 
Tea Party Cupcakes
adapted from Cook with Jamie, by Jamie Oliver
yield: approximately 20 cupcakes
Ingredients
for cake:
1 cup unsalted organic butter, softened
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
.5 tsp. kosher salt
.75 cup + 2 tbsp. organic sugar
4 large free range organic eggs
zest of 1 lemon
for icing:
2.2 oz. fresh blueberries (or raspberries or strawberries)
1.5 cups powdered sugar
juice of 1 lemon
Preheat the oven to 375 F.
Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.
Beat the butter and sugar together until they are light and fluffy.
Add the eggs one at a time, fully combine them before adding the next.
Fold in flour and lemon zest, gently. Be careful not to overmix, you are essentially making a spongecake, but still, it should be delicate in the end, not gummy.
Spoon by heaping teaspoonful (the kind for eating, not measuring) into lined muffin tin.
Bake for 15 minutes, or until golden brown and springy to the touch.
Cool on a rack while you make the icing. (Which is just zizzing the berries in the food processor and adding them to the lemon juice and powdered sugar).
Use a teaspoon to drizzle the cupcakes with the icing. It will not be typical icing texture, don't fret. This makes it delicate and you don't feel like you have fur growing on your teeth when you are finished eating it, because there is nothing princess-like about that at all.
Garnish with fruit. 
Happy 22nd Birthday, Sistercat!
Love, Sissy, Matthias, and Yossarian
The Scariest Recipe of the Month is a monthly feature in which we showcase a recipe from the internet or television that we have found and utterly flabbergasts us. They usually include scary ingredients, scary preparing methods, or just horrible ideas. This is one such thing.
This month, I thought we'd go with something scary in the sense that someone out there actually thinks that this is a recipe. it's not a recipe. it's directions for pouring something into a glass of ice.
Back in July when we were having some...problems...with our apartment, we went back to Lancaster, PA, where I went to college and where many of my friends still reside. We were playing poker (Hannah had just learned how to play the night before back here and she totally whupped me.) and drinking. My friend Harry, who was nice enough to let us crash at his place, suggested we try a drink from this bottle of something he got for his Anniversary. it was this unholy, unnatural sky blue hazy liquid, that looked like something out of an 80s punchbowl.
It was called Hpnotiq and it is shnarsty. It tastes like isopropyl alcohol combined with the slight twinge of burning paraffin and red phosphorus. It is shit-ass. I'm not kidding. We think it's pronounced 'hip-no-TEEK,' but there's a good chance it's 'hypnotic.'
However you say it, it's awful.
So, I was watching, idly, Semi-Homemade With Sandra Lee the one day on Food Network. And if you don't know what this is, my god, please watch. Please. the woman's idea of a good recipe is opening a packet of McCormack's seasonings and dumping it into a pile of undisclosed meat and whacking it into the oven.
Now, let's be fair. Hannah and I are not the world's greatest cooks. We're pretty good. But we're not the world's greatest cooks. It's early in our foodie career and we've still got lots of ground to cover. But I assure you, we do not think that easy baking solutions include slapping marzipan on a store-bought sheetcake and pressing cupcakes into them. That's just simply not baking. Sandra Lee, however, believes that this is the paragon of the culinary world. She is the world's laziest cook. World's Laziest. And her food just looks horrible.
It her "Ocean Breeze" cocktail is this month's scary recipe. Food Network calls it the Hypnosis cocktail, but she calls it Ocean Breeze on the show.
Recipe? Oh, you'd better freakin' believe it!
Ocean Breeze (Hypnosis)
Ice
Blue-colored fruit-flavored cognac and vodka liqueur (recommended: Hpnotiq)
Blueberries, for garnish
Place some ice cubes in a tall glass. Pour in some liqueur and garnish with blueberries. Serve immediately.
Please read that again.
The ingredients are ice, some sort of blue-colored fruit-flavored cognac and vodka liqueur (the only one of it's kind being Hpnotiq) and blueberries. She's telling you, you idiot monkeys, to pour a liquid into a glass and then add blueberries. And because it's very possible she's evil, those blueberries are from Chile. And you know how we feel about blueberries from Chile.
Scariest recipe of the month, ladies and gentlemen. A woman's instructions on pouring a terrifyingly bad liquid into a glass.
Gyeh.