Labor Day included a lot of labor in the kitchen for me as I made and decorated cupcakes for Siler’s first birthday party. A true Southern girl, I spent several days obsessing over the perfect treat for this milestone. It’s just a given that you can’t celebrate anything in the South without eating.

I’m really not much of a baker. I love to cook, but every time I bake a cake or some kind of treat, I’m reminded of why I don’t do it often. By the time I finish, the kitchen is a disaster, and it’s taken me much longer to complete my baking project than it says on the recipe.

Yes, I could have saved myself the trouble and bought a birthday cake form the store, but I had to make my little boy’s first birthday cake myself. I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to store bought cakes. For that, you can thank my grandmother. I’m sure she would consider it a sin to celebrate a birthday with anything other than a homemade cake.

My grandmother ran a catering business for several years, and she always made my birthday cakes when I was growing up. I only wish the art of baking had been passed down to me. She can probably mix up, bake and decorate three cakes in the time it takes me to make one cake.

I took a cake decorating class several years ago, and I try to use what I learned. On special occasions I enjoy getting creative in the kitchen, especially when it comes to my children’s birthdays.

For Siler’s birthday, I decided to make caterpillar cupcakes. I actually found the recipe on Martha Stewart online and modified it a bit to save time. I made an adorable caterpillar head on one cupcake and lined the remaining cupcakes in a curve to make the caterpillar’s body. It was pretty darn cute. Yes, I’m bragging. It takes a lot of effort and time for me to pull something like this together, so I deserve some bragging rites.

I’m always a little annoyed when people say things like, “ Why waste your time stressing about a birthday cake for a one year old? It’s not like he’s going to remember it. He’s too young.”

That is probably true. Siler, of course, didn’t care what kind of cupcake he had at his first birthday party. All he knew was the cupcake tasted sweet, and he liked putting his hands in it.

I can’t tell you every cake that my grandmother made for me on my birthdays, but I definitely remember some of them. Once she made me a hot pink cake with black polka dots. I’ve never forgot that cake. As an adult, I now know it was more than a cake. It was a gift from her heart…something she made with her hands. It was a baked “I love you,” and you can’t buy that from your local bakery or grocery.

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