the initial dewy-eyed glimmer of love does not last long. take this mighty cookies and cream cupcake for instance, with oreos blended into the frosting and the cake, enough to make up for the sleight-of-hand optical illusion of just half a cookie tucked into the crest of frosting. mighty as it is, ’tis no match for the superhuman cake demolition power of a kid moments out of a screening of “kung fu panda 2”. in no time at all, it is but a pile of crumbs.

i don’t expect it comes as a surprise to you that around these parts cake is its own food group. at the tail end of the last school holidays, the cupcake central workshop put out its shingle on the shiny white honeycomb tiles in a tucked-away corner at the melbourne central food court. good timing!

after you get over your mint green envy of the instore bakery’s mint green smeg fridge, the vintage kitchen scales and the cluster of luscious peachy blooms in old drink bottles, you can wrestle with the task of choosing your cupcake. i picked two: a chai latte babycake, with a salty caramel chaser.

the chai cupcake was quietly pleasing, with a subtly spiced, delicate crumb and a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar on the creamy frosting. the salted caramel number, on the other hand, was an assertive mutha: rich chocolate cake made even moister with its secret puddlicious heart of salted caramel, and an artful drizzle of the same. it really was the perfect little mouthful… and i could’ve had another five.

though i didn’t.

some weeks later, lured into the city with the promise of a special run of bacon and maple syrup cupcakes, i succumbed to this adorable red velvet cupcake. it was typically, classically cake, impecably-frosted, moist and just short of chocolatey, and in some ways better than the main event.

now, i do ordinarily love the combination of salty bacon and sweet syrup, and this cupcake, with its hidden nubbins of meaty bacon and swirl of mapley frosting was just that. the feather in the cap of course, was the generous shard of bacon, but i dunno, i found it too chewy in this instance. consider, if you will, rather than a strip of lean oven-baked bacon, a streakier alternative: a blistered red ribbon fried crisp in oil, the fat offering a little explosive crunch with each nibble. perhaps it’s a salty little foil, maybe it has a sweet maple edge. either way, mmm…

of course, the kid was nowhere as critical. after inhaling her raspberry-white chocolate cupcake, she made happy noises at all the bacony bits through her second course. she saved the meaty garnish until last, and then chewed on it for twenty minutes or so as we wandered through the city. as far as she was concerned, it was the gift that kept on giving.