In honor of a colleague’s birthday (admittedly, it’s belated on my part), I made some cupcakes known as “better than sex cake”. I have written about the better than sex cake before (recipe can be found there, too). (I imagine that they taste better than they look. Reliable taste-testers have confirmed this. It’s basic yellow cake topped with pineapple, banana slices, vanilla custard and coconut – pecans if desired.)

I also made some of the old favorites – white chocolate macadamia cookies, M&M cookies and tea cakes (I used pecans rather than walnuts or almonds, as I had been doing). I also made an experimental batch of peanut butter chocolate chip Butterfinger cookies, which turned out fine but spread too much. I am not sure whether the presence of crushed Butterfinger candy bars in the recipe made the dough too gooey or what, but it was definitely not the right consistency, even though I thought as I was rolling them that they would be fine. (If you like peanut butter, chocolate and/or Butterfinger bars, then you will still love this cookie even if its form did not turn out to be exactly what I had envisioned).