Science whiz Alexis is out to prove that cupcakes are healthy in the latest addition to the Cupcake Diaries series. Alexis thinks she has the perfect project to win the Science Fair—she’s going to prove that cupcakes are good for you! But all thoughts of the school competition go out the window when she spots her crush walking home with another girl. Maybe she should have whipped up a love potion instead! Meanwhile, the girls are challenged to make rock and roll cupcakes for Martine Donay’s sweet sixteen—and she is anything but sweet! Cupcakes with black icing, anyone? From cupcakes to ice cream and donuts! When she’s not daydreaming about yummy snacks, Coco Simon edits children’s books and has written close to one hundred books for children, tweens, and young adults, which is a lot less than the number of cupcakes, ice cream cones, and donuts she’s eaten. She is the author of the Cupcake Diaries, Cupcake Diaries: The New Batch, the Sprinkle Sundays, and the Donut Dreams series. Her newest series is Mia in the Middle. Alexis Cupcake Crush CHAPTER 1 Health Cakes I took a big bite of a chocolate cupcake. “Mmm! Yummy! Vitamins and minerals!” I mumbled through the crumbs. But it was not yummy. Not yummy at all. “Ugh. These are horrible!” I yelled, and ran to the garbage to spit out my bite. “Sorry, Katie,” I added sheepishly. Emma and Mia laughed and Katie shook her head, but she was smiling. The Cupcake Club was helping me out—again!—with a project, but for once it was something we were all experts in: cupcakes! This time, it was my project for the science fair, and I had decided to prove that cupcakes are good for you. I know, it sounds crazy—like yet another marketing scheme of mine—but it turns out it’s true. Under certain circumstances, anyway. So, according to my research, chocolate is good for you; especially dark chocolate. It is good for your blood and liver and cholesterol, and when you eat it, it releases endorphins, which relax you and make you feel happy. So, dark chocolate cupcakes with dark chocolate frosting are a must for the science fair. It’s just a teeeeeny bit difficult to make dark chocolate taste really good without adding lots of sugar. (The bad thing about sugar is that it cancels out a lot of the healthy things about dark chocolate.) That’s why improving sugarless taste is one thing we were working on in our “test kitchen,” which was at Emma’s house today. Another way cupcakes can be good for you is if you swap out unhealthy ingredients for healthier ones. Like, instead of oil or butter, you can use applesauce, and instead of sugar, you can swap in either a sugar substitute, like stevia, or something naturally sweet, like sweet potatoes. Katie’s really good at that kind of thing, because she just intuitively understands the principles of baking. My mom would be too, if she were a baker, ’cause she’s really into healthy eating. But for her, healthy eating excludes cupcakes, and I think that is very, very sad. (And so does my dad, who loves cupcakes!) If we can reduce the sugar and fat in our basic cupcake and frosting recipes, and up the dark chocolate, and then add fruit or veggies, then we can have a healthy recipe I can use for the science fair (not to mention samples I can hand out to the judges!). It’s just been really slow going, and honestly, it’s starting to seem like we’ll never get them to taste good. Mia’s convinced if we make them look pretty enough, people will just eat them and not care, but I disagree, and so does Emma. “It’s not about looks!” said Emma. “Easy for you to say,” I teased. Emma’s a model, and you know how really pretty people can sometimes take their looks for granted and, like, not notice them? She’s like that. I suppose it’s a good quality, but it can be kind of annoying, anyway. Emma rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.” Mia nodded. “I disagree. They have to be visually appealing.” “Mia’s right,” said Katie, her brow furrowed in concentration. “A lot of our perception is visual, even when it comes to taste. A good appearance makes us imagine one thing, while a bad appearance makes us imagine something else. Same with the aroma. If they smell good, that’s half the battle. You should make all that part of your research too.” I sat on a stool in Emma’s kitchen. “Well, we definitely don’t want people imagining . . .” I lifted a jar Katie had emptied into the new batter, and read the label. “Sweet potato puree? Yuck!” “You’d be surprised,” Katie said wisely. I sighed. “That’s why we pay you the big bucks, Katie. You’re the taste doctor.” I shrugged and pulled over the notebook I was using to keep track of the recipes to see what Katie had written in it. What I saw there was much more to my liking: quantities, measurements, pricing, calorie counts. . . . In a word, numbers! My favorite thing. “Six ninety-nine for one little can of sweet potatoes?” I asked incredulously. “They’re organic, and they’re pricey when they’re