The cheeky irony is not lost on me as a grown-ass gay man: when I was a child, I loved beavers. Love, love, LOVED the beaver. Wrote school reports on beavers. Made dioramas of beavers, their kits, and their lodges and dams. Visited a beaver sanctuary for my birthday. Had a beaver birthday cake. In my world, beavers were better than baseball and basketball and all the balls. I was even a beaver for Halloween – a costume I have yet to top. So the truth is I’m not a stranger to the beaver, as gay as I turned out to be.
That said, my beaver obsession largely dissipated by the time I was a teenager, but I made the mistake of mentioning it to co-workers and ever since then I’ve been inundated with beaver gifts and items. Suzie recently got me a pair of pajama pants that had beavers on them, and Heath just gifted me a beaver t-shirt for my birthday. I say this now so you know not to get me anything more with beavers on it as I’m set. Totally good with the beaver – should I need more I’ll slap the surface of water to alert you.
Be that as it may, I decided to make beaver cupcakes for Heath, as I recently found what seemed to be a simple design for them online (see also ‘No good ever came from fucking Pinterest’). As with most ‘simple’ recipes found online, it was anything but. Well, it’s probably not that bad for someone more accustomed to doing such things, but crafts and cooking combined is not in my immediate wheelhouse, so I considered it a challenge.
Hats off to all the parents and caretakers who did and do this bullshit on the regular for their kids – because FUCK THIS. I’m too much of a perfectionist to be thrilled with the results, but I appreciate their overall look and whimsy, and the imperfections and wonky eyes just make me laugh rather than stress. Also, I mastered the cupcake and frosting bit – even Andy said the frosting was good, which is the greatest praise coming from our home cake boss. The eyes were candy ordered online, the ears were Junior Mints from a recent movie night with Emi, the nose was a peanut M&M, and the teeth were a pair of Tic Tacs. As for the tail, that is one half of a Nutter Butter cookie – and my favorite part of the whole scene. It was also the most problematic. I didn’t take into account how much the frosting and cupcake might soften the cookie, so when I revisited these the next morning ALL of the tails had broken off and fallen to the table. I had to insert new ones to bring them into work. A couple hours later, they started to fail again, so these need to be inserted at the very last minute. While I’m not a total stranger to the beaver, I guess I needed a reminder not to insert the nutter until it’s show time – and that’s the only sweet beaver advice I can offer to you.
