Which is completely different than cupcakes. My friend Bonnie recently pointed me to a post on Cake Wrecks for steampunk cakes. There were some truly gorgeous cakes on there, including the hat with the clockwork butterflies that she’d originally called to my attention.

I alo loved the cups on that page.

Then I followed some of the links to the creators of the cakes. There are some truly gorgeous cakes out there. (I informed my son he doesn’t get one with dragon-shaped dragons for his birthday, but he says that’s not what he wants. Win-win!) And I ran across a lovely stack of teacup-shaped cakes with flowers made of frosting from Christopher Garren’s.

If my daughter ever decides to have tea parties, I’ll . . . work up to something like that. We’ll start with a single teacup-shaped cake, I think.