Ahoy!

In honor of Halloween, of no longer being sick (after ten days in bed), and of Lito going back to work (despite the fact that he still has a very mean esophagus that hurts him), I give you: Pirate Cupcakes.

Pre-Halloweening Mini Cheesecakes

Is it just me, or did all things Halloween seem to begin on October 1st? Target and Old Navy are full of fun stuff, and I have to admit that for the first time in a while, I'm actually pretty excited about All Hallows Eve. So naturally I started by trying a new recipe. Cookies and cream cheesecakes made Halloween style with special edition black and orange Oreos.

I used a whole Oreo as the base for the mini cheesecakes. The Oreos have cats, ghosts and jack-o-lanterns on them. Check out the awesome orange layer under the cake. (I wanted to type "bootiful" just now. I'm really glad I didn't.)

Oh Martha.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes. Sounds good, right?

So yesterday my husband, Lito, was like, Heeyyy.... you haven't made cupcakes for a while...and the guys at work have heard a lot about how awesome they are.... The gauntlet was thrown. Cupcakes had to be made. So I sent a list of possible cupcake flavors I'd like to try, including PBChocolate, and that, my friends is what I made.

I returned to my perfect-bound Martha Stewart cookbook and flipped through to the loveliest picture of warm, perfect cupcakes. And I made the recipe. Here they are with frosting:

Bah.

So, here I am, expecting to be able to post on the magnificent maiden voyage of the kitchenaid mixer, and it was lovely, truly, so I should post on that, but instead, I'm going to tell you about some really lovely pretty cupcakes that didn't taste that great. That's right. They were okay. And maybe it should be preceded by the following caveat: I have no baking/culinary training whatsoever, other than what I've picked up along my quest to eat delicious desserts.

See? Aren't they pretty? The frosting tasted (tastes) fantastic BTW, but I knew it would -- butter cream frosting always tastes good.

So I tried Martha Stewart's buttermilk cupcake recipe. Yep, I'm calling out the queen of all things domestic and lovely. But here's the deal: other people have tried this recipe and liked it, so, ya know, maybe don't write her off entirely. Maybe just think before you make these particular cupcakes.
It looks like a Ferris Wheel of delicious cake.

So here's the scoop: the recipe, first of all, said that it yielded 36 cupcakes. When I made it, I came out with over 48, for a family of two, that is way too effing many cupcakes. Even for me.

Second of all, the cake wasn't dry. But it wasn't moist either. Someone explain to me how a cake that calls for EIGHT eggs (five whole and three additional yolks) can not taste like a dreamy dream loaf? Perhaps the eggs were the problem. The cake was dense but kind of stuck to the roof of my mouth. Irritating.

But absolutely lovely. No?

Mixer Bliss

The strangest thing happened today -- As I was walking through the living room, I noticed that there was a big cardboard box out on our fenced patio. How did it get there? Did our lack of doorbell scare off the delivery guy? Did Brownie magically make a cardboard box appear? (She does find some random stuff to play with out on that patio...) But wait! When what to my wondering eyes should appear! Does it say Kitchenaid? Does it?

It did. So I very carefully opened the box and peeped inside to see if it could be true.

Chocolate Cupcakes

Last Thursday was my darling friend, President Susan's, birthday. I sent her a ridiculous one-liner email, "Do you like chocolate?" And this is what resulted. Happy day.



So instead of doing what normal people do, which is call before you randomly show up at someone's house, I just loaded up the cupcakes and drove over to where I thought her house was. Don't worry that I'd never been there before. Or that when I got there they had a security gate. Seriously, who wouldn't let you through a security gate if you had cupcakes? Note to all would-be criminals: begin baking.

Cookie Cookie Cookie Starts with "C"

So here I was at home minding my own business when the desire to eat homemade chocolate chip cookies hit me like a mack truck.

I think this has something to do with wanting to be home again, eating the good stuff my mom would make. I had spent part of the day thinking about how awesome it would be to come home from school and have warm cookies on the table....

(Don't worry that I'm not in school any more, I'm just imaginative.)

The favorite red bowl, the essential Azteca vanilla (seriously), and the dough, whipped up with the hand mixer.