This Sunday, my fellow leadership team and I are getting together with our spouses to celebrate the holidays and the close of a very good year with a potluck. I’m looking forward to the camaraderie, the laughter, and the break from the office.

Up until yesterday, I was also really looking forward to the food. You see, I’m a foodie. I like to eat really delicious things, particularly sweets. If I didn’t work out, I’d quite literally be the size of Honey Boo Boo’s mother. Probably bigger.

In fact, I love food so much, I’d practically give up a a vital organ [except my stomach, of course] to get a job in which all I do is eat. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work well for my wallet or my waistline. Not too many career paths in self-indulgence anymore. Well, actually… but that’s another topic all together.

So why am I not looking forward to the food anymore?

I am a baker. When I’m happy, I bake. When I’m sad, I bake. When I feel like fattening up coworkers or buttering up my friends to help me with a move – I bake. So, naturally, I signed up to bring a few batches of cupcakes, a bottle of vino, and my cute significant other.

All was well in the world.

Then someone else signed up for cupcakes.

Oh… you want to make this a cupcake battle, eh? Alright. Two can play at that game.

I braced myself to whip out the big guns, smirking at that coworker – they didn’t realize who they were facing. I’d knock their socks off with my decadent, fudgey, heath bar filled cupcakes and they’d wave the white flag in utter defeat. Oh yes, this would be the easiest battle I ever faced.

Then ANOTHER coworker signed up to bake cupcakes. And she can BAKE. I’ve had her cupcakes and they are practically rolled in cocaine and dipped in heroine, with a thick layer of ooey gooey goodness on top.

So it’s a war then, is it?

What was originally going to be a casual, fun, even relaxing potluck among friends has now turned into the battlefield of a cupcake war of epic proportions. Even though the event is not until Sunday evening, I’m elbow-deep in batter, crazily creating new concoctions, experimenting with recipes, and basically covering every square inch of counter space in flour, eggs, and minced chocolate bars. The smears of raw cookie dough on my face are my war paint. The burns from pulling pans out of the oven my training scars. I am pulling out all the stops, taking every risk and not thinking twice about it.

On Sunday night, my cupcakes will win over the crowd and I will be declared the  CHAMPION of the Great Bake Off of 2012. This is a fact. I will take no prisoners with my conquest.

Oh! There goes the timer. Back to the kitchen for me.

To the victor go the spoils,

~ Victoria Elizabeth Ann