Black Bottom Cupcakes

I love cupcakes. I was a fan long before Magnolia Bakery in New York, Sprinkles in Los Angeles, and Cupcake Royale in Seattle made them the iconic dessert of the new millennium. I think they possess powers no love potion can match. I met Jim O’Connor, a navy lieutenant, twenty years ago in a San Francisco bar, Pat O’Shea’s Mad Hatter, where the sign out front reads, “We cheat tourists and drunks.” After two dates, Jim left for San Diego to spend six weeks there preparing for engineering exa