Chocolate cupcakes with a dash of red wine and a fresh blackberry buttercream.

Hey, so I had planned to share a new paleo dish with you today. But then I recalled it was my birthday, and I was craving something celebratory, alcoholic, chocolatey, sweet, and, well, YOLO.

Although I obviously want to eat healthily and be healthy, when you’re 33 and fighting with it, life sometimes become a little too much and you just need to take a break and do whatever the heck you want. For me, this is that day.

When I was younger (and still learning the English language) when my family sang the birthday song to me, I would attempt to join in, but all that came out was, Happy to me! I am overjoyed! My family still reminds me of this by wishing me a Merry Christmas! Every year on this day, I’ll never get over it.

At the very least, it is utterly charming and not terrifying or humiliating. I was a very cute child. Do you want proof?

That light golden hair. The huge grin. The tiara is stunning. Damn. Cute.

Thus, without further ado, I present to you a dish that small me would never be permitted to eat: red wine chocolate cupcakes with blackberry buttercream icing. Yeah, yes, yeah.

DI was going to create some kind of teal-colored vanilla cupcake for the base, but the concept of teal-colored food frightened me out, so I bailed and opted to take a another route with it that was lot simpler and didn’t rely on food coloring at all. Then there’s Yum Cups.

In my hunt for the perfect cupcake liners, I came upon these lovely teal silicone cupcake liners. I’d seen silicon cupcake liners before, but just thinking about washing them made me exhausted and furious, and there was usually some kind of statement on the container saying you couldn’t put them in the dishwasher.

Waaaahhhhh. These Yum Cups, on the other hand, invite you to clean them in the dishwasher. BAM. So, the ideal color, the appropriate size, reusable, and dishwasher safe? SOLD.

Yum Cups, for the record, has no clue who I am. So they’re not paying me to tell you this; I simply want you to know about them so you may save money and enjoy them as well. Take that as my birthday present to you. Will you join my future silicon cupcake liner club?

The cupcakes themselves are next. Because of the olive oil and red wine in the mix, the chocolate cupcakes are absolutely moist (sorry if that offended you). The batter does not have a strong red wine taste, but you can smell it. And it’s magnificent. I used Truro Vineyards’ cherry red wine since it’s one of my faves, but you may use anything you choose.

I don’t like too sweet frosting, so I use less powdered sugar than you’d find in a conventional buttercream recipe. I prefer to let the tart blackberries do their thing with a little assistance from lemon juice and sugar (relative to most frosting recipes).

I like the beautiful color they produce without the need of food coloring. Of course, if you want to brighten the color, you may add a few drops of food coloring (heres my favorite).

There’s no use in creating a large cake for my birthday since there’s just Bill and myself in the home (not to mention all the animals).

That’s why, 99% of the time, I prefer cupcakes; they’re precisely portioned goodies that I can share with people whenever I choose.

I’m not sure whether I want to stop aging, make all these storms go away permanently, win a vacation to Hawaii, find a million bucks with no strings attached, or simply have a nice night’s sleep.

I’m telling you, I’m already an old woman, since the final thing on the list is probably my current favorite.

Alright, I guess I’ve made my decision, and it’s none of the above (I promise Ill let you know if it ever comes true). It’s time to extinguish the candles!