Courting Myself at Sweet Melissa

It’s been awhile since I’ve had a non-work related assignment to complete, and generally I’m quite grateful for that. Earlier this month, though, I was reading through one of my favorite blogs (Pink of Perfection) and the author, Sarah, had posted an enticing open project for completion.

The assignment at pinkofperfection.com was to take yourself out on a date and then write about it in your blog. As projects go, I can safely say that this was among the more pleasant-sounding; after all, the idea, as Sarah wrote, is to court myself a bit. So, I decided to take her up on the challenge. And since I was taking myself out, I knew exactly where to go and what to do in order to make the date positively perfect.

Naturally, the date involved cupcakes.

It began, though, with a walk through Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Just walking along the paths was an otherworldly experience, with lush plant life in bloom and all the forgotten scents of spring coming from every direction. Since one never knows how many “nice days” one will get in this city, I savored the stroll, alongside multitudes of joggers, bikers, and roller-bladers.

An ulterior motive of this scenic route was to build up my appetite for what I knew was awaiting me: Sweet Melissa. If you are not familiar with this Brooklyn-based patisserie, I’m very sorry for you, and I suggest that you make it a priority to visit one of the two locations (Park Slope and Cobble Hill) as soon as possible.

The menu features breakfast and lunch fare, as well as a large selection of baked goods, all of which is a testament to the culinary genius of executive chef and owner, Melissa Murphy. I try not to use a term like “culinary genius” too lightly, but I feel that it’s perfectly apt in this case.

I have yet to extensively sample the entire selection at Sweet Melissa, but I have become well-acquainted with the cupcakes. On my date, I was delighted to find that one of the cupcakes of the day was chocolate cake with white frosting (my absolute favorite combination). With a smile of anticipation, I took my cupcake to the stool by the window, and slowly took my first bite. Delicious, of course! The cake itself was springy and had a rich cocoa flavor and the frosting was mildly sweet —not the artificial saccharine explosion of cheap junk food. No, this was a genuine treat for chocolate-lovers, as has always been my cupcake experience with Sweet Melissa.

After the cupcake, it felt to me that the best part of the date was sadly over. As I try not to hold long one-sided conversations with myself in public (or in private, really), I didn’t have any dazzling banter to fall back on, as I might on an actual date. Riding on my delightful sugar high, the only thing left to do was to invite myself back to my place.