As an unabashed lover of cupcakes, I was disturbingly excited to eat my fill at the Horace Williams Memorial Cupcake Festival hosted by the The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill on Friday.

 If it's any testament to my riveting social life, I'm pretty sure that enjoying a wide array of delicious cupcakes would have been the highlight of my weekend.  I didn't eat all day in preparation for the sugar-filled feast.

Just kidding. I ate a little bit, but reserved significant room for dessert.

But my dreams of baked good bliss were shattered when 25 minutes into the festival, the cupcakes ran out.

"We were petty overwhelmed,"  said Ernest Dollar, director of The Preservation Society. "Chapel Hill has demonstrated that they love this event...it tripled from the first year."

The festival, which doubled as a cupcake competition had 48 entries and more than 250 people in attendance. Lines were out the door, and parking was scarce.

The number of entries were double from what they were last year, and participants baked 300 of the tiny cakes for the apparently very hungry crowd.

"The competition was quite fierce," he said. Several professional bakers from the area submitted entries in addition to local cupcake neophytes.

In the end, Jan Yan's cupcake creation, "The Key to my Lemon Lime" won the hearts and pallets of the judges, which included the News&Observer's food writer, Andrea Weigl.

The winning cupcake was "really good," Dollar said. (I guess I'll just have to take his word on that.)

Tickets were sold for $5 and the event raised $1300 for The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill.

What began as a small birthday celebration for the late UNC philosophy professor more than seven years ago, has turned into quite the soiree.

"It has grown to this insane event, we’re very exited people in Chapel Hill enjoy cupcakes," he said.

Dollar said The Preservation Society will plan for more people and cupcakes when organizing next year's festival. I, on the other hand, will plan to get there at least a half hour earlier.

Read more about the Horace Williams Memorial Cupcake Festival in this week's Chapel Hill News.

Chocolate cupcakes were a perfect way to celebrate the last day of school and my children's various academic achievements.

But no ordinary cupcakes would do. I had to please two dark chocolate- loving adults and a cake-hating 8-year-old.

In her 2009 cookbook Bakewise, Shirley Corriher promised rich, moist chocolate flavor in her Deep Dark Chocolate Cake. Although it was a little tricky to make, the cake lived up to its billing.

After I had polished off my cupcake, I was looking forward to snagging a few bites off my daughter's plate. Not this time. The cake-hater had left only crumbs.

I found myself with an overload of strawberries this week. Could this ever be possible? Between the huge bucket of luscious berries that my neighbor dropped off on Sunday, last year's jam in my pantry and the prospect of picking more this weekend – I was starting to get berry bored. So I decided to make cupcakes. 

They were a huge hit with the kids, and best of all, no artificial flavor or color. Just berry goodness. Here's the recipe.

In today's paper, in case you missed it, I had a roundup of cupcake bakers across the Triangle from Bliss Bakery in Chapel Hill to Cupcake Envy's cakelets in Wake Forest. Click HERE to read about which ones we liked best. 

I also profiled Kitty Kinnin, the cooking deejay on 100.7 The River. Click HERE to read that story. 

Greg Cox's Epicurean column shares new Mexican options across the Triangle from Bravo's Mexican Grill in Cary to Los Portales in Durham.