Book excerpt: The ultimate guide to gourmet cupcakes, featuring grown-up flavors (figs! whiskey! fried chicken!) and the delicious story of a family saved by a love of sweets No food coloring. No fondant. No red velvet. Upscale bakery Robicelli’s has become a buzzed-about, in-demand purveyor of decidedly adult cupcakes. Nixing cutesy, pastel-colored dollops of fluff for real ingredients and rich French buttercreams, the husband and wife team have reinvented the cupcake craze for a more sophisticated palate, making each a small piece of the greatest cake ever made. Now their extraordinary recipes are available to the home cook. Now their extraordinary recipes are available to the home cook, including: The Laurenzano (fresh fig cake topped with goat cheese buttercream, fig balsamic gastrique, and crisp prosciutto flakes) The Brooklyn Blackout Cake (chocolate cake with chocolate custard buttercream, dipped in homemade fudge and rolled in chocolate cake crumbs) This book captures not only the Robicelli’s unique take on baking but also their edgy, unapologetically hilarious take on life, including how they survived severe economic setbacks to launch the country’s hottest cupcake brand— a venture begun with thirty dollars in borrowed quarters. Offering both cupcake recipes and a recipe for life that calls for a stash of “emergency cake,” Robicelli’s: A Love Story, with Cupcakes is a baking book like you’ve never seen before.