A couple weeks ago, as you may recall, I was desperate to bake up some goodies involving the first two spring fruits — strawberries and rhubarb. Jenn suggested I try cupcakes first, which was just as well because Rachel of Coconut & Lime was marking her fifth blogiversary with a contest involving her recipes.

So I commenced, far later in the evening than was advisable, to make her Baby Loves Rhubarb Cupcakes:

I chopped the rhubarb and decided to add a few strawberries to the batter for added excitement. To account for the strawberries, I also added an extra tablespoon of flour.

The cupcakes were easy to make, but I ended up with eight instead of the six Rachel predicted I’d have. That’s fine. More cupcakes!

I put them in the oven and moved on to the Fluffy Rhubarb Frosting. Be forewarned. Rachel describes this frosting as “almost marshmallow like” and this is very accurate, particularly as the cupcakes age. If you live with someone who, like Rudi, does not particularly care for marshmallow flavor or texture, I’d suggest making a buttercream frosting instead.

The first step of the frosting calls for you to beat egg whites in a stand mixer. Check.

The second calls for you to make a rhubarb-flavored simple syrup. I had never made simple syrup before, but it was 1 a.m. and, well… I ignored that niggly little voice in my head that expressed doubts about acquiring this new skill so late in the evening. I put sugar, water, and chopped rhubarb in a pot on our electric stove, which I then turned to high to boil, stirring occasionally, as directed.

I was supposed to keep boiling and stirring it until it reached the soft ball stage, which is when the molten liquid forms a solid when dropped into cold water.

If you are an accomplished cook or, possibly, if you’ve made simple syrup before, you can probably guess what’s coming next.

I am neither, particularly when it comes to things being made on the stovetop, so I was completely surprised.

I reached the soft ball stage … and kept on going right past it.

This is no longer simple syrup. It is now … toffee, or something similar.

There are several things you can do at this point. Let me suggest that one of them should not be to lift the spatula up in surprise and — this is the part that kills me — intentionally put a drop of whatever you have concocted on the tip of your finger. It is hot. It is so hot that it will make you gasp. And if you make this mistake, please, for the love of all that is tasty in the world, do not repeat this experiment five minutes later when you think it “has cooled down.”

At this point (going on two in the morning), Rudi, who has now patiently been waiting for dessert for three hours, comes to my aid. He looks at the recipe and suggests that I ought to have brought the original concoction to a boil on a low temperature. I offer to finish it all the next evening, but we realize that I have egg whites sitting on the mixer and that cleanup is just going to be a pain. Rudi, ever the trooper, starts the simple syrup again, this time on low.

This time we had better luck and, eventually, we reached that elusive soft ball stage. I spun the mixer back up to whip up the egg whites and strained what remained of the rhubarb out.

Mindful of my burnt finger, I poured the steaming liquid into a bowl that would be easier to pour from into my mixer than the scalding pot. Unfortunately, Rachel’s exhortation to “work quickly” in adding the syrup to the egg whites was hidden down in her comments, so I just poured slowly, not wanting to cook my eggs, which, of course, led to quite a bit of the syrup cooling enough to stick like rubber cement to the pouring bowl and spatula, rather than making its way into the mixing bowl.

Nonetheless, I forged on and, after adding vanilla, soon had frosting.

Finally, at 2:30 in the morning, our cupcakes were frosted, sprinkled, and ready to eat.

Quite photogenic, particularly for so late at night, don’t you think?

Rudi was a real trooper and got up the next morning to wash the mountain of sticky dishes before he headed to work.

The cupcakes were good, but, we agreed, an awful lot of work, especially late at night.