SWEET SURRENDER

Come on, people! Let's get debaucherous. Shed the ennui that's been causing that slight slump in your shoulders ever since the economy crashed in your favorite Sin City lo so many months ago.

Recession? What recession? That thing is way over.

It died shortly after 10 a.m. Tuesday in an underground kitchen on the Strip. A bald Frenchman with graying facial hair did the deed.

The murder weapons were thus: Venezuelan chocolate derived from the rare and fragile Porcelana Criollo bean; decades-old cognac that was made using grapes from the Grande Champagne territory of Cognac, France; Tahitian vanilla bean caviar; and flakes of gold -- yes, actual gold.

Behold Decadence D'Or, the $750 cupcake.

"Voila," said the Frenchman.

He really did say that, complete with a mondo accent. He is Johann Springfield, head baker at the Palazzo and creator of the monstrosi -- er, luxurious cupcake.

This cupcake -- it is way more than a cupcake, actually -- can officially mark the end of hard times for our little town. Who'd be selling this thing otherwise?

It debuted with much fanfare as the signature dish for the newly opened Sweet Surrender candy shop within the resort. A press event was staged. A news release went out. Blogs went crazy. Google $750 cupcake. You'll see.

Don't we all want to believe that a $750 cupcake can succeed?

So why not right here, the town that's supposed to be the home of ridiculous excess, not the sort of hand-wringing gloom we've all been taking part in for more than a year now?

Springfield said the brainchild of the cupcake was his boss, Chef Long Nguyen, The Venetian and Palazzo's executive pastry chef. The boss said: Create something grand.

"The challenge," Springfield said, "was to make something we've never seen before."

And so that's what he did.

Springfield said it took him a month's worth of experimentation, tasting and consulting with his colleagues to get it just right.

So, can you make this at home?

Sure, if you've got the money. Here's a step-by-step guide, as Springfield demonstrated it Tuesday to the press:

First, you bake a couple of chocolate -- pronounced "SHOCK o lot" if you're a French chef -- cupcakes. Make one a little bigger than the other.

Then you create a fleur de lis out of melted sugar.

While the sugar is hardening, you grab those cupcakes. You slice off the top of the small one, then place it inside a handcrafted crackled-gold glass plate and bowl. Scoop out the middle and fill it with the ganache.

What's ganache? It is chocolate, cream and butter, pretty much. But the ganache you're using today is special. You use chocolate that runs around $63 a pound. You chop it up finely and mix it in very slowly with the cream mixture you've heated up.

You hand squeeze this ganache into the scooped out middle of the smaller cupcake. You place the larger cupcake on top. Scoop out the middle of that one, too, and fill it with the ganache.

You cover the cupcakes with a square of fondant, which is a kind of icing. You've already airbrushed golden fleurs de lis onto the fondant.

You place a dome you made earlier out of pure chocolate on top. It's covered in edible flakes of actual gold. You've poked a hole in the top of that, too. You fill the void with this creamy vanilla goo you've made.

You hand place little beads of hand-pollinated Tahitian gold vanilla caviar all around the edges of the chocolate dome.

Then you grab your sugar fleur de lis and polish the heck out of it. You don't want the bubbles to be visible.

Next, get your bottle of cognac -- but not just any cognac. For this, you use Louis XIII de Remy Martin cognac. This stuff is made from a blend of 1,200 different cognacs. It runs as much as $2,000 a bottle.

You coat the inside of the sugar mold with wax, because alcohol eats sugar. Then you fill the sugar fleur de lis with the cognac, plug the hole with more sugar, and plop the thing down on top of your cupcake.

"Voila," said the Frenchman.

He said the hefty price tag comes for a couple of reasons. First, the ingredients are rare, so they are expensive. Second, it takes him several hours to make one from scratch. Expensive ingredients plus lots of labor equals about $750.

Springfield said that despite the price, some people have actually bought these things. VIPs, high rollers.

But is it any good? Can a cupcake really be worth more than a serviceable used car? Can a cupcake really replace societal gloom with collective glee?

Can a cupcake really make us happy again?

Let us say this: It was really good.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.