Trying to wrap my head around converting int to ascii (itoa?).

Using Arduino Programming Questions
2

Well, you can do it the "hard way" -- something like:

char myminute[3];
int minute = 42;

myminute[1] = minute % 10 + '0';
minute /= 10;
myminute[0] = minute % 10 + '0';
myminute[2] = '\0';

Or maybe use sprintf -- which works just like in perl

sprintf(myminute, "%.02d", minute);