Birthday cupcakes

Here are some cupcakes I made for my flatmate's son, who turned nine yesterday.  They were well received, except he thought the '9' was a 'g' and was a bit confused :)

I used a tried and trusted recipe, but had forgotten about needing to decorate the top.  I found some candles in a drawer and used chocolate chippies to write his name.

To me, baking something like this, a gift, could be viewed as creating an artefact, a work of art, rather than just labour.  Reading Thomas Green's Work, leisure, and the American schools helped me think about how baking fits into Hannah Arendt’s framework or work, leisure, and labour.

By reading Green, I realised that baking as I do, for gifts, does create an artefact of sorts, but because that artefact is food, which is ultimately consumed, baking comes under the “labour” set of activities.  Also, according to Green, labour is concerned with those matters in life that occur in cycles, such as seasons, and life and death.  I bake when events occur in people’s lives, to celebrate life and loss.

Green, T. F. (1968). Work, leisure, and the American schools. New York: Random House.