Its my grandfather’s birthday celebration tomorrow, Sunday. Mamay, as we foncly called him, a Batangueno word meaning grandfather, is celebrating his 94th Birthday. He may be in his 90’s and survived prostate enlargement in his late 80’s but I tell you, Mamay is is still strong and kicking.
He is the eldest of the nine children of great grandmother of whom I was able to meet in my childhood. I think she died at the age of 100+. He has seven children, 35 grandchildren with the youngest aged 12, and 23 great grandchildren with the eldest aged 20 and the youngest aged 2 years old.
That’s our Mamay with his two daughters, son-in-law, his grown up grandchildren and grandchildren-in-laws and the young ones are his great grand children. He is currently residing in our province in Batangas with my godmother (her youngest daughter). My most memorable experience with him was my college graduation. Despite his age of 88, he went to Manila just to witness my graduation. I think I’m the last of his grandchild that he was able to witness the college graduation. One thing I love about him and his apos (grandchildren) is his dedication to us, that despite his age, he is still insists on going to our college graduation.
O could still remember how he took care of my older female cousins. He has this habit of fetching my cousins in their school, which is a public hschool near our home in our province, at exactly the end of the their class. My cousins, who are consistent honor students in high school that time, would complain that they don’t have the luxury to go somewhere else as my Mamay would always be waiting in front of the school to fetch them. When my other cousin who was a consistent honor student started getting lower grades due to reading tagalog pocketbook, he confiscated all those pocketbooks for my cousin to study, which I think she still gets the chance to sneak some pocketbooks to read.
As a way of saying thank you and for more years to come, a toast of cupcake for you Mamay!
For the cupcake base, refer to Carrot Cake Loaf a la Kusina ni Teds recipe. Here are some few changes, I used a teaspoon of cloves instead of half teaspoon and I did not add walnuts to the base as I’m going to use it to top the cupcakes. For the Cream Cheese Frosting please refer to Joy of Baking‘s recipe of Carrot Cake but instead of using a teaspoon of lemon zest, I only used zest of one lemon. Finally, I scoop about a tablespoon of the frosting on a cupcake and added roasted walnut, I did not bother to chopped it as for those who does not like walnut, they could easily remove it.
HOW DOES IT TASTE?
I fell in love with this cupcake. The addition of cream cheese frosting is really divine. The sweetness, tartness and the lemon zest really compliments well with the carrot cake. Its as if the frosting gave a lot new color and depth of flavor to the carrot cupcake. It’s like pure happiness in every bite.
