Sometimes, I ask myself, “What better way to wake up than to the smell of freshly-baked cupcakes mingling with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee?”

And I answer myself, “No, there’s no better way to wake up from that.” Then again, it’s also fun to wake up to the kiss from a beloved. But that’s another story.

Anyway, now that I’m quite old and very stressed (adult life can really get to you) I find that I have less and less time to go out and get myself a half-dozen of my favorite cupcakes from my favorite bakery. But there’s an easy solution: I can make them myself! So with my salary I bought my own pans and ingredients, and I started baking.

As with all first times, it is very rare that you get it right the first time around. My first time was no different. Out of the 6 cupcakes I tried to bake, 3 got burned, 1 was not too firm (I can still see and taste the batter), and 1 looked more like a pointless glob than a cupcake. Only one was perfect, exactly the way I wanted it to look like and taste.

But it was enough to keep me going.

To this day, whenever I feel stressed or just burned out, instead of spending time away from home (and spending a lot of money in the process), I just stay in the kitchen and whip up a new batch of my comfort food. Come next week, I’ll be all energized again. A little bit of heaven can really take you a long, long way.