Last weekend, during the Taste of Georgetown, I had marching orders (after, that is, passing out City Paper mouse pads, which I think people use to mop up coffee spills now) to pick up cupcakes for a party Carrie and I were hosting that evening. But when I got to Georgetown Cupcake, the line to get inside the tiny store was all the way down the block.

For chrissakes, I thought, you could make cupcakes in less time than it would take to wait in this line. Well, maybe not these Gourmet magazine cupcakes, but in the end, you’d be paying a lot less money per cupcake than those ones at Georgetown. C’mon, folks, give baking a chance!