I like to believe that I’m a different person than I was in high school.

When I was a teenager, I was a bit of a loner. I spent the first three years of high school trying to fit in. My senior year, I decided it would just be a better idea to spend as much as possible in the art room of my small rural high school.

Sure, I had friends, but the majority of them were really just situational friends. People who I would never see again once I was in charge of my own “real life” schedule, and high school was over. But during those fragile years, I didn’t see that. I had my blinders on, and my goal was to gain as much popularity as possible.

I know I’m not the only kid who fell into this trap.

I know that many kids think that the only way to get through high school is to pretend they’re something that they’re not, and succumb to peer pressure.

Luckily, I didn’t go about my quest for popularity that way.

I never did drugs or went to rowdy parties or get suspended from school. I never ever had to go to detention or got in trouble with my parents.

Nope.

I tried to be popular by signing up to be my high school mascot…

The Spudder.

If you’re not sure what a Spudder is, it’s a potato. A large, light brown, crowned, hell-bent on glory, potato.

My duties as “the mighty spudder” included, but were not limited to-

-Drumming up support and cheers during football games.
-Partaking in my own personal dance, or.. “doing the mighty spudder”
-Instructing others how to join in. (the directions went something like *shout * “DO THE MIGHTY SPUDDER NOW! OOH- ah ah ah OOH ah ah ah OOH” and flexing my mighty shoestring arms while voguing. Yeah, its one of those “you’d have to see it” kinda deals.)
-Attending pep rallies, assemblies, all football games and related activities
-Posing for photos with adorable little kids who had no idea exactly how smelly the inside of the giant potato suit I was wearing really was.

It was really quite fun, although during the time I donned the costume, I had to maintain the façade of “unaffected teenager” because that’s what my friends were. They hated school, pep rallies, cheer. All that fun stuff.

Thusly, I never divulged my whereabouts during football season during my sophomore and junior years, instead telling my friends that I was busy with family stuff, and couldn’t hang out or whatever.

My secret stayed a secret until about a year after high school when one of my friends found a photo of me with the cheerleaders, holding onto the costume…. And I was smiling. I was actually enjoying the company of cheerleaders, and that was suspicious. I spilled my guts and told them all about my two years of service as the football season spudder.

They laughed.
I laughed.

From then on out I’ve heard constant jokes about potatoes.

My favourite was about three years ago, right around Thanksgiving, hanging out at my parents house while my mom and dad debated the differences between sweet potatoes and yams, and which was better or even acceptable for thanksgiving dinner, as well as which of the two my mom had been serving over the years.

He turned to me and said “Ooh, ooh! You should go in there and announce-‘I yam what I yam, and that’s a sweet potato”.

My recipe for sweet potato cupcakes with brown sugar butter cream cheese icing-

1/2 cup Butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup cooked, peeled and mashed sweet potatoes
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon maple or vanilla extract

Cream the butter and slowly add sugar, eggs and sweet potatoes. Sift the flour, baking powder, soda and spices together in a separate bowl. Mix the maple extract into the milk and Add dry ingredients alternately with the milk into the sweet potato mixture. ( Drier sweet potatoes might require more milk.)

Spoon the batter into lined cupcake cups. (I used parchment paper squares that I folded into the metal muffin tin)

Bake in 350° oven for 20-30 minutes. (this recipe made 36 standard cupcakes for me, though yours might vary depending on the size of your muffin cups and the thinness of your batter.)
For the icing-

1/2 cup butter
2 8oz packages cream cheese
3-4 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar

Beat together the butter and cream cheese until soft and creamy (use a stand mixer). Add in 3 cups powdered sugar. Mix until crumbly. While mixer is still on, add in the brown sugar. Depending on how soft the mixture becomes (the brown sugar will add moisture, so it will thin out the icing) add 1/2-1 cup powdered sugar until the frosting is fluffy.

Spread a generous amount of frosting on cooled cupcakes, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and top with a marshmallow, unless you’re one of those people who think putting marshmallows on top of sweet potatoes is just weird, in which case… spoon on a little whipped cream. But marshmallows work much better.

Eat and enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving day tomorrow!

-A.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 3:22 am and is filed under November 2007, The Cupcakes!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.