My birthday is this Wednesday. I will be 31. I’m not terribly excited about it. Last year was 30 and a big freakin’ deal. I MADE IT it a big deal. This one is a blip way UNDER my radar. I turned 30 and was riding high. This year I feel old from all the stuff I’ve been through since then. MEH.

Adding to that big fat MEH was starting a new job as of this last Friday. I don’t really want to write much about it, but the past few days have been boot camp. And I’ve been stressed. The last two jobs were, in chronological order, working in front of a computer eight hours a day and then retail, working mostly in front of a cash register. This time around, it’s a food service barista job, and my brain has been trying to hold in the gabillion details flying at me. (I’ve never made a cappuccino in my life.) I’ve done food service in the distant past, and my rhythm is rusty. I’ll get used to it, but my brain craves that tropical island of zen and focus.

I started plotting out this blog entry a while ago, and most of the elements have fallen through. I wrote a rough draft a while ago, and I’m not using any of that. My recipe sort of fell through too, when I discovered that guava juice didn’t exist at Wegmans.

Guava has been a recent discovery as of last year. Guava juice is definitely the nectar of this goddess. My original plan a while back was to order a guava cake from a California bakery I follow on Twitter. Financials have been unknowable up to this point, so no go. So I thought, pineapple cupcakes with guava frosting! That should be awesome!

Nope. I opted for mango nectar and canned papaya. I got it all home and started experimenting with mango frosting. Frosting #1: Nothing combined very well. Dumped. Frosting #2: Too much liquid. Kept in the fridge for ice cream topping.

Argh. Argh. Argh. I wanted to write an entry about tropical cupcakes and accessing that island in my head. Well, that island doesn’t really exist, so I will philosophize in a different vein.

Life is screwy. You master a set of skills, thinking you have it made. There are many people who stay within the set, never budging from it, secure and safe in what they know. To learn new skills requires new synapse connections. You make mistakes. You are required to change. This is a challenging and ego-busting process. This is true for anything, not just skills. An environment, an idea, and even a person.

So mango butter cream, I love you. New job, I love you too. When you decide to take on something and get a handle on it, the reward is larger than those first few difficult moments of getting your bearings. I am reminded of the movie The Visitor, in which a staid college professor discovers squatters in his NYC apartment. They are illegal immigrants, one of who teaches the professor how to drum on his djembe. The professor wakes up and realizes that life is much larger than his own tunneled viewpoint. At the end of the movie, he is drumming in a subway station, uninhibited.

So stress happens. It hits you full force, and if you are open, you adjust. Then the zen island does come, for a while. Hang on to it with both hands and don’t take it for granted. Relax intentionally and believe in yourself. It will fuel you through the next big challenge. This is the key to resiliency.

So yes, the mango butter cream did turn out. Maybe not up to my expectations yet, but good enough for now. Frosting #3: I beat a stick of room temperature butter with an electric mixer, added confectioner’s sugar (1-2 cups, depending), and mixed in mango nectar. You want enough liquid to get the taste, but not too much to liquefy it. I’d think about two or three tablespoons? I added some food coloring to make it orange.

I baked my cupcakes. I made the pineapple cake part from the same cookbook from which I made Dad’s birthday cupcakes. This book is coming in handy, and it turns out wonderful cupcakes. The alteration I made was using half canned papaya and half canned crushed pineapple, ground together in a blender (bits of fruit, no puree).

I frosted and decorated.

The taste was lightly refreshing and tropical indeed. An aside: The frosting will become grainy (unless you are a superior baker), but that won’t really matter since the taste is so scrumptious.

I wasn’t quite satisfied. I had saved some unfrosted and made Frosting #4 yesterday. I bought a mango, sliced it up and added it to the beaten butter and confectioner’s sugar. The color was better, but the taste wasn’t as intense. Hmm. I probably should’ve added more mango.  Maybe.

I still had some leftover Frosting #3. Frosting #5: Combine and consolidate! (The cupcake shows half of #3 and half of #4.)

And that is the beginning of my dream butter cream. Happy birthday to me.