The Domestic
As a child, Sophie White routinely ruined the birthday parties of other children. Now, at 30-something, she somehow manages to regularly ruin her own
Sophie White decides to act her age
Birthdays can be hard. As a confirmed narcissist, I find the birthday very challenging. What birthday, you ask? Yours, mine, everyone’s. If it’s not my birthday, it’s a struggle. As a child, needing to be the absolute centre of attention, I sabotaged many a classmate’s birthday party with my histrionics, fainting fits, vague ‘sore tummy’ — you name it. Unbearable stuff. And I do feel acute remorse for these past attempts to thwart the birthdays of others. Not least because I know better than anyone how it feels to have me wreck their big day. You see, I annually wreck my own birthday, too.
Every year, it’s the same. It begins with the same pronouncement to Himself and anyone else I can badger into pretending to listen: “Oh, I’m going to go really low-key this year. I don’t need any more stuff. No parties, no presents, please.”
Then, when the appointed day arrives and everyone treats my birthday in a relaxed and low-key manner, I completely and utterly lose the plot. Every. Time.
“I am thirty-bloody-four and no one even cares,” I have been known to wail.
“But you told me specifically to ignore your birthday this year,” Himself pleads.
“Yeah, but I tell you that every year, and every year I then feel totally overlooked and unloved.” It doesn’t help that my work-wife’s birthday is the day after mine, and she, being a rational and reasonable person, always plans
“I know better than anyone how it feels to have me wreck their big day. I wreck my own birthday”
lots of nice things to coincide with her birthday.
“Lia is going away to Wicklow for her birthday,” I huff.
“Yeah. And?” Himself crosses his arms. “You’re going with her.”
“Shut up, and let me wallow. Everyone loves Lia and no one even cares that I’m a year older.”
“I would say emotionally, you’re doing a Benjamin Button,” he retorts.
I can’t blame him, really — the one year he went all-out and threw me a surprise party, I still wound up in a moan-spiral because I had felt ‘unprepared’ for my surprise party and hadn’t been able to get myself a new outfit.
This year, since it seemed off to bring a personal birthday cake to the work-wife’s birthday weekend away, I made my favourite cake in cupcake form to whisper-sing a self-pitying little rendition of Happy Birthday alone in the kitchen to myself.
At least if you live by the saying “you’re only as old as you feel”, being so scarily immature means I’m still just a child, even if my biological age says otherwise.
COFFEE & NUT CUPCAKES Makes 12 For the cupcakes, you will need:
• A little hot water
• 2 tablespoons instant coffee
• 100g walnuts
• 225g butter
• 225g dark brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 225g flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
For the icing, you will need:
• 2 tablespoons instant coffee
• A little hot water
• 165g butter
• 425g sieved icing sugar
• 2 tablespoons milk
1
Preheat the oven to 180°C, Gas 4, 350°F and line a cupcake tray with paper cases. Add a little hot water to the instant coffee and mix to dissolve the granules. Toast the walnuts in the preheated oven for about five minutes. Keep 12 walnuts intact to decorate the cupcakes, and chop the rest. In a bowl, beat the butter and the dark brown sugar until the mixture is pale and creamy, then add the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the mixer bowl if necessary.
2
Gently fold in the flour, the baking powder and the chopped toasted walnuts, then spoon the cupcake mixture into the paper cases. Bake the cupcakes in the preheated oven for about 15-20 minutes, or until a knife inserted comes out clean. Leave to cool.
3
To make the icing, dissolve the instant coffee in a little hot water. In a bowl, gently beat the butter and the sieved icing sugar until the mixture is creamy, then add the coffee and the milk to loosen it a little. Spread (or pipe) icing on each cupcake and top with a walnut.