Best. Cupcake. Ever.

Those are the words spoken to Sean regarding my newest creation...(Since I send most of them to his office, I don't get most of the accolades. I have to try to live vicariously.) He told me feedback for these cupcakes was off the charts. That people who never really speak to him were stopping by his office to tell him how great they were. That they were gone in record time. What are these cupcakes of awesomeness? I haven't come up with a name for them yet (I like BopCakes in honor of my dad--long story on the nickname), but here's a description:

Start with a slightly spicy hint-of-maple cake (made with rum, freshly-grated nutmeg, a touch of black pepper, and maple), a light maple buttercream (also with fresh nutmeg), and topped with a generous serving of caramelized maple and black pepper bacon. Yup. That's right. Bacon. Incredible. Ab-so-lutely incredible. Breakfast in a delectable paper liner.

And now I'm going to step on my soap box.  I've heard for a long time that "real" cooks use freshly ground nutmeg each time they cook.  They grate the little brown "nut" over a zester each time. "Psh..." I thought. "Really. Whatever. I bet you can't tell the difference."

Well, the last time we were in Seattle, I stopped by Market Spice at Pike Place Market and picked up about 15 little nuts. They last forever, basically, if kept in a good container. "What the heck," I thought. "Food Network has never really steered me wrong."

Oh. My. Gosh. HUGE difference. Gigantic. It's like they're not even the same spice as the pre-ground stuff you pick up in a plastic jar. I had no idea. I've been royally schooled. So if any of you out there care enough to buy some whole nutmeg at a spice shop or online, and a lemon zester or something similar for about $6, prepare to be amazed. If not, well... I won't tell.

But I'm still missing a name for these cupcakes of bacony awesomeness.  Any thoughts?

Stargazing Lilies...

I got another order this week, and it was a big one. 48 red velvet cupcakes, 48 creamsicle cupcakes, 48 mini cupcakes of a flavor I'd determine, and a mini cake for the birthday girl at her surprise 30th birthday party.

In talking to her boyfriend (the one who is financing the cupcakes), he said that she is spunky, fun, loved tie-dye, and her favorite flower is the Stargazer Lily.

So I made red velvet cupcakes and put two or three little red fondant blossoms with pearl centers on the top of each. Not really spunky, but perhaps fun. I made "tie-dye" fondant stars to put on top of the creamscicle. I chose chocolate cupcakes with Bailey's coffee frosting, and made chocolate swirls and chocolate zigzags.  And for the mini cake, I made an off-center stacked red velvet (her favorite) filled with cream cheese, iced in buttercream, and topped with three handmade, handpainted Stargazer Lilies crafted from gumpaste.  The picture above doesn't show the beading I piped around the bottom of the cake once it was moved to the platter, but boy howdy... am I proud of that cake!  If she wants to eat the lilies, she could--though gumpaste tastes nasty. But they'll also stay in that form for a really, really long time, so if she wanted to keep them, she could do that, too!

The party is tonight, so we'll see how the feedback goes. Sometimes I'm surprised that I'm so willing to give away something that I work so hard on. But isn't that why I do this in the first place? This is my art... you don't hang it on walls, but I can be sure that for the next few days, people will be talking about this cake!

The place you are meant to be...(an artsy-fartsy, non-cupcake post)

Sometimes at night, I find myself standing in the darkness, staring out at the moon. Somehow, standing there alone, it’s comforting to know that no matter where I go in this world, the same moon is hanging above those I love. I catch myself wondering nonsensically if anyone else is staring at the moon at that moment, thinking about me… then I generally shake myself out of it and crawl into bed.

It’s so difficult for me to fathom how I came to this point, how I came to this place.  Nothing in my life is as I would have imagined it to be ten years ago, five years ago, three. I am not who I imagined I would be.

There is a section of path near our building where young oaks grow tall along the sides of the trail, forming a ceiling of leafy gothic arches and white sky. For that stretch of path, separated from anything to yank myself back into the present, it’s possible for me to imagine that I’m somewhere else…some time else. I used to wish for that. I used to wish to be in another time. I felt convinced I was meant to be in another era, another time in history. I grew out of it, I suppose. It was nothing more than the wistful dreams of an angsty teenager, convinced that no one in the world could possibly feel the same way. I’m sure at some point it’s a thought that crosses most everyone’s mind.

Our town is also a place that’s stuck, uncomfortable with its place in time. We all live in various remnants of its heyday. In the enormous brick cotton mill that made it a “company town,” in the rows and rows of converted boarding houses, in the mid-20^th century rowhouses of brick and shingle. The people, too, seem caught out of time. With no back porches, people gather on the stoops to escape the oppressing summer heat of their airless houses. Shirtless men sit drinking their beer for dinner, while women in shorts and tank tops smoke on the steps, keeping watchful eyes on the kids riding bikes, running up the sidewalk barefoot, drawing in chalk. A beat up sedan drives by, windows down, base thumping and vibrating everything within a 100-foot radius. An anachronism.

I can hear the cicadas now on my evening walks. I didn’t expect to find cicadas here, and the joy that I felt when I first heard their screeching calls took me by surprise. It is not a sound I had ever expected to miss. Like so much else, it reminds me of a different time.

Growing up, I was certain that I was going to be a country girl all my life. Keep me out of the cities, they’re too crowded. Now it seems that too has changed. While I’m not unhappy here, I find that I love Manhattan. I love the bustle, the subways, the characters, the rudeness, the kindness, the cafes and coffee shops and bakeries. We talk about a future there, but what use is planning anymore? And yet, when I go home, back to the mountains and the evergreens and the rivers, I find it hard to pull myself away. I love the calmness, the quietness, the predictability. Like so much else that I find I am no longer sure of, I no longer know where I belong.

I am sure that if I tried hard enough I could find a quote from someone long dead and purportedly much wiser than myself that would say something like, “The place that you are meant to be is the place where you are now.”

For now I know I will find no answers. For now, I will have to content myself with being right where I am, right when I am.

Red Velvet and Blue Suede

The weekend after I made the cupcakes of mass meltage, I was catering a dessert open house for the same woman. I met with her and she gave me a budget, and told me that she wanted traditional flavors, and she really wanted my red velvet cake and a coconut cake with lemon filling. Her daughter really wanted strawberry cupcakes, and her son wanted chocolate. her husband, apparently, didn't get a say. So of course I ended up making all of the above, along with lemon cupcakes. I also made sugar cookies and the crazy, ridiculous, super rich, over-the-top brownies that she liked last time.

The main conclusion that I came to after two whole days of baking was that if I do this for any sort of living, I'm really going to need another mixer. Mixing batter and frosting for strawberry cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, lemon cupcakes, red velvet cake, coconut cake, and brownies means that I washed that sucker 11 times. 11 times in a day! And that's not counting all the other bowls and prep dishes I had to reuse time and again. I really hate dishes.

After the monster week of fondant disaster, I didn't have the gumption to do anything stellar with the decorations--plus, it wasn't in her budget. I made blue, yellow, and purple molded chocolate flowers for the strawberry cupcakes, but I just relied on pastel metallic sprinkles for the chocolate cupcakes, and yellow and orange decorating sugar on the lemon cupcakes. I covered the coconut cake in--what else?--coconut, and I shaved some mild German chocolate to rim the red velvet cake.

I have to admit, when I went to the open house I had moments when I felt like a rock star. I had people seek me out and ask if I had made "my" red velvet cake because they had heard all about it and wanted some... but yet again, over and over, people said, "oh, YOU made those brownies? Those are crazy fantastic!" The irony of this is that I don't even enjoy eating brownies. They are usually last on my long, long list of crave-able sweets.  Theoretically I earned some future specialty business from the event, but none of it has hit yet.

Around the Fourth of July, I decided I wanted to make a stacked cake. I made a few mistakes, though, and the cake wasn't stiff enough for stacking.  I ended up scrapping a whole cake (poor Sean...he had to help me eat the leftovers). My original plan was to make red velvet and "blue suede" and cover it in red cream cheese frosting with white stripes, but alas... it was not meant to be. In the end, I just made a blue suede sheet cake with red cream cheese frosting, white filling, and white fondant stars.  Sean said that he actually had a few people come up to him and ask permission to cut the cake because they thought it looked too nice to cut into. I'm not sure what the commentary was on the name of the cake (I thought it was pretty witty), but apparently they thought it was delicious.

Sean's little brother Anthony came out to visit us over the Fourth of July weekend, and his birthday is coming up this month. I told him I would make him any sort of cake he wanted (and though Sean was in the background trying to pressure him into asking for red velvet), he chose chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting.  And.... of course I biffed the cake. I inadvertently turned the oven off when I was setting the timer, so by the time I got it reset and the oven back up to temperature, the cake that resulted turned out dry, dry, dry.  And I also learned another hard lesson--"natural" peanut butter, which has zero hydrogenated ingredients, makes HORRIBLE peanut butter frosting. It's granular and separates and looks completely unappetizing (we're talking like something you'd find in a baby diaper unappetizing) and is just generally no good.  I stood there, looking at the mixing bowl in perplexity, wondering how in the HECK I was going to fix this, when brilliance struck. It wasn't working because nothing was hydrogenated, right? Or even partially hydrogenated? So obviously, I needed to add hydrogenation. Fantastic! Half a cup of shortening later, and it was a creamy dream.  Of course, I couldn't tell that the cake was a chocolate Sahara until we cut into it, at which point I lamented the death of a good cake. But Anthony, bless his soul, said, "Jill, I didn't even notice. I'm not a cake expert or anything, so it's fine!" Sean wisely said nothing at all, and just poured some milk on his cake. Me? I skipped the milk and went straight to the Baileys. Anything can be fixed with alcohol.

I don't think Sean ever got over his red velvet cake craving, so he told Anthony to ask me to make another cake, because apparently I can't say no to Anthony (and as though I would ever say no to Sean???). This whole red velvet kick of his has taken me by surprise. I mean, I'll admit that it's a dang tasty cake. But his hands-down favorite has always been spice.

"Is this your new favorite, or something? I would figure you would ask for spice," I said.

"Well, can't you kind of mix them both?" he asked?

"Hm.....," I replied.

So I did. I made some sort of super delicious red velvet spice hybrid. It was moist, delicious, and perfect with its sloppy cream cheese frosting. Sean took a bite, and said, "Ok, you've redeemed yourself." Anthony, mindful of my feelings, told me that it was delicious and very moist, but "the chocolate cake was good, too."

After work on Monday, Sean came home and asked if I was in a baking mood. Apparently, he needed to bring treats to his meeting with the State, and he told his team he would check with me. I really didn't feel like baking, but like I hinted earlier.... I can't say no to Sean. So out of my entire repertoire of cake, what does he ask for? The red velvet spice hybrid again.  I made 48 minis, some of which didn't make the cut because of symmetrical problems, and at least three of which Sean and I ate. But after I was done frosting them, I only had about 23. 23?? Where did the rest of them go? I just shrugged it off as really bad math (if I had eaten that many calories, so I didn't want to think about it) and cleaned up.  After all, Sean really only needed about 16. Well, when I was going to bed, I noticed a whole cooling rack of mini cakes that I had set aside and missed. After I got over my relief that I didn't unconsciously inhale 20 mini cupcakes, I froze them. I really didn't want to frost more at midnight.  When Sean came home that night with the empty cupcake carrier, I asked him if the cupcakes went over well. He nodded his head and kind of rolled his eyes in a little bit of exasperation and told me that he nearly had a mutiny on his hands when one of the teams thought they wouldn't be able to get any.  Next time I'll be sure to send the full 40.  And something tells me that I should start charging Sean. He would have just spent the money at Dunkin' Donuts anyway, right?

And you know what I did every single stinkin' time before I turned on the oven?  I opened it up and checked it out first. Even though I knew... I knew there was nothing in it. Yes, yes.... I can be taught.

YES, okay?

This weekend I baked up a storm (more to follow later) for an open house. And for all you people who gave me a hard time last time for not checking the oven, YES, I checked it this time, okay? Even though I knew there was nothing in there, I checked it anyway. I've learned my lesson.

Hard Lessons

I had a big order this last week. A lady in my building who has taken me under her wing asked me to make specialty cupcakes for her children's last day of school. She wanted enough cupcakes for the class, but asked that I make each one represent a separate lesson or theme from the school year. Her list was long and included some rather odd things--the Vikings, maps/globes, insects vs. arachnids, Native Americans, plants and seeds and how they grow, cursive handwriting, Haiku poems, Martin Luther King, Jr., endangered species (specifically a manatee), Charlotte's Web, Jackie Robinson, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, French, the Karner butterfly, Howe Caverns (incredible stalagmites/stalactites),  a pig for the teacher (she loves pigs), and fractions (fractions? really?).

I started on Sunday by making and coloring several batches of marshmallow fondant. I sculpted until I was sick of it, and planned to finish it all Monday night (caveat: I am not a sculptor. I have not attempted anything so intricate before). She needed them delivered on Tuesday night, so that worked well--if I had them done Monday, they would have time to dry and set up enough to avoid any problems in class on Wednesday. Things were turning out well, but taking forever, so on Monday night I gratefully put the horns on the Viking helmet, dumped the dishes in the sink, put the decorations in the oven to keep them from contamination, and hit the sack.

I telecommute, so I couldn't start the actual baking the next morning, which is the only step that I had left. So I took a late lunch and gathered all the ingredients and preheated the oven. I went back to check my email and came back to the kitchen.....and saw the decorations in the oven. I swore like a sailor, with language I don't care to repeat in front of my parents or any small (or not-so-small) children.  The decorations were melted. Ruined. Desecrated. Dead. The Eiffel Tower was a puddle. The boxing spider and lady bug had been reduced to blobs with eyes and red gloves. The globe--the globe that I had worked so hard on that you could actually recognize continents on it--had succumbed to global warming and sunk until only the northern hemisphere remained. The teepee was unrecognizable. Charlotte melted irretrievably into her web. Howe's stalagmites sagged over like a wilted flower. The portrait of Martin Luther King, the cursive sampler, the Haiku, and the fractions would have been salvageable, but they were stuck on top of each other. And the manatee! Oh...Wait... the manatee was kind of fine. Sure, he had some orange stuck on his tail from the stalagmites, but that can be scraped off, right? And the plant sprouting from the seed.... well, it's a little flat, but it will work. And the chickens in the sack for The Fantastic Mr. Fox...well, they were kind of saggy and some feet and a beak needed replacing, but I could probably save them, too.

I choked back my tears of panic--there was no time!--and got to mixing more fondant immediately. 14 hours of work down the drain, and I could only hope that I would be able to bake 20 cupcakes and icing from scratch and recreate 14 custom decorations in under 6 hours. I went into a zone of cold, methodical efficiency. I had done this all before. I had learned hard lessons. I could avoid those pitfalls now. I had enough black fondant left over that I could make smaller versions of the Eiffel Tower, the spider vs. lady bug, and Charlotte. Making black fondant is time-consuming. Takes lots of color and elbow grease. Time saved. By doing it the hard way before, I had learned the easiest way to shape a cone for a teepee. Breeze. I had painted MLK once, I could do it again. I already knew my Haiku. I gave up on a fondant butterfly and used chocolate, my tried-and-true. I had enough pink to make another pig. So what if the globe was only one-ish crooked hemisphere? It would do. I didn't eat, I didn't go to the bathroom, I didn't deviate. Cupcakes were in the oven as I was sculpting. As before, the Viking helmet and hammer were my last creation. Batch two of the cupcakes were in the oven as I made cream cheese frosting.

Uh oh. What is this? I had taken so long with everything else, and the day was so hot (mid-90s), that my ingredients had gone beyond the desired room-temperature and into melty. I put it in the fridge. It wouldn't set. I cheated and added shortening. It wouldn't set. I knew... I knew it was a bad idea, I knew I should use my tried-and-true buttercream, but she was paying for cream cheese. I should give her cream cheese, right? I frosted the cupcakes, and they drooped. I scraped the icing off, added more shortening, refrigerated it some more. Frosted again, put the decorations, on, put it in the fridge, and prayed. After half an hour in the fridge, I braved it, carried them the equivalent of three city blocks, and took them to the apartment. The good news? She LOVED the decorations. The bad news? The icing was sloppy and going everywhere. There was no way they would make it into class. We talked it over, and I left the cupcakes at her house in the cooler kitchen (no oven heat!) and zipped back to my place to make a quick batch of buttercream. Tip for all you bakers out there... putting an egg in warm-ish water and using defrost on cold butter for about 20 seconds brings everything to room temperature really quick.

I loaded my apron pockets with all the tools of my trade and extra fondant, and headed back to her apartment. Her husband and I meticulously took off every decoration and cleaned it, scraped the icing off of each cupcake, and fit them snugly in a couple of Pyrex dishes. I had them iced with the buttercream in less than two minutes, and then I put all the decorations back on. I snapped a couple of quick pictures, brushed the hair off my forehead, and stepped back. I was done. They looked...passable. Oh, she loved them. But they weren't what I normally aim for. And I was excited, because the husband is an amateur photographer, and he was going to take really good quality photos of the decorations.

Well, the thing is... I got out of there at about 11 PM. The poor guy fell asleep on the couch. He never took photos. I am KICKING myself for not at least taking photos of the decorations on their own. So, I've edited the snapshots as best I can to show my cupcakes.  But before I get to those, let me recap my lessons learned:

1) Always check the oven. Always. Even if you haven't baked anything for three months and there are cobwebs on the dials, check anyway.
2) Things go faster the second time around.
3) When you don't have time to panic, you can accomplish great things.
4) If something isn't working, trust your gut. You can save a lot of time later. If you have to take flack from a client for not giving them exactly what they want so that they can have a better product--well, who can argue with a better product?
5) Kids are totally awed by cool decorations and could care less about what the actual cupcake looks like.

So, with those lessons learned, I present the cupcakes. The angles aren't good, the closeups are poor, but I did what I could do.

The northern hemisphere. Pig in the foreground.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl. The clever fox would take chickens and toss them into a sack. There's one right-side-up chicken and two upside down chickens. Stalagmite tips in the foreground.

From top left to crooked right -- please note some are upside down: Fractions (tri-color fondant in thirds with a sign that says, "1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 1 whole cupcake!), the Haiku (Five, seven, five\syllables in a Haiku\Poetry is fun!), the teepee, Fantastic Mr. Fox. Middle: French (Eiffel Tower and French flag), Charlotte's Web (I actually spelled "humble" in the web), the Northern Hemisphere, Howe Cavern Stalagmites. Bottom: The boxing ladybug vs. the spider (the kids counted the legs on each to make sure I was right), the pig.

Pastel chocolate version of the much bluer Karner Butterfly. Baseball for Jackie Robinson.

Black and white portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr., and over-sized (for a cupcake) manatee.

A cursive sampler, sheet music for the music teacher.

Not pictured: The viking helmet and hammer, plants and seeds and how they grow. 

Kitchen Sinks and Black-eyed....Gerbers?

I splurged this weekend. I had resolved that I wasn't going to spend any money on any non-essentials for two weeks. And then I got a 50% coupon in my email from Michael's and I couldn't stop the siren call from dragging me under. That's how Saturday found Sean and I in the baking aisle of the chain craft store, me dithering indecisively over various thingamajigs and widgets, and Sean patiently acting as basket-bearer and occasional sounding-board. I finally settled on a fondant and gumpaste flower-making kit (think flowers made out of a sugar dough, basically), and was all in a tizzy to get going. I reined myself in, though, at least for a day. Luckily, I was tasked with bringing dessert to a Memorial Day barbecue.

The traditional fondant, the kind that is usually used on wedding cakes to give them that smooth, utterly flawless look, isn't very tasty. It's difficult to make from scratch, and somewhat expensive to buy. That's why I use marshmallow fondant. I can make a batch myself for under $2, and even though it's still basically straight sugar, it tastes better than the traditional stuff. Gumpaste is sort of the same thing, except that it tastes worse, dries out faster, and is usually used to mold or shape flowers. I haven't made any of that myself yet, but it's easy enough to do.

Sean's office mates have been the lucky recipients of my experiments. I've sent in creamsicle cupcakes, sweet tart cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes with coffee frosting, mocha cupcakes with (real) Irish Cream frosting, and some tender and flaky not-your-average scones in the flavors of chocolate chip and orange rum spice.... and with all that selection, with all those unique flavors, they said that the traditional, nothing-special, comfort food Red Velvet was their favorite. As much as that tamped down on my desire for shocking new--yet tasty!--flavors, I recognize a good thing when I see it. Plus, I'm a purist at heart. I just believe in taking traditional comfort food flavors and making them the best they can possibly be.

So my decision was made. Red Velvet cupcakes for the barbecue. But what kind of flowers go with Red Velvet? I didn't want to try something too wacky right away, so I settled on a daisy. But a plain daisy is boring. What about a sunflower, or a gerber, or a....Black-eyed Susan! Feeling like the Black-eyed Susan was calling me home to my Idaho roots, I decided to go for that. I got a bit too carried away with the red coloring gel, though, and they came out a bit too orange. Meh. I can just called it a Black-eyed Gerber.

Using fondant instead of gumpaste was a bit challenging. They still came out beautiful, but required more work to make them so. After creating 14 flowers (which is really only 7, since they are double-layered), I gave up for the night. I put them all in the oven--off, of course--to dry overnight and keep them from any contamination. In the morning I took them out first thing so that I wouldn't make a stupid mistake and ruin them by turning on the oven. I whip up some completely ridiculous-over-the-top brownies (we're talking marshmallows, almonds, heath bars, chocolate frosting, and homemade caramel sauce), get the Red Velvet batter going and the cupcakes popped into the oven, and leave Sean to watch over them while I run to Michael's to redeem another coupon (can't use them on the same day, drat it all!) to pick up some color dust for the flowers.

I come back, and Sean says, "I pulled them out, but I wasn't sure what that other thing was in the oven, so I just left it there." I look at him in incomprehension for a moment, then go to the oven with a sinking feeling in my stomach. There, on the top rack, in a plastic, warped, non-oven-safe dish, is a poor, bloated, unrecognizable excuse for a fondant flower. I had missed one. Sadness. At least the dish was cheap and I had six more blossoms to work with. I colored some leftover fondant a dark brown, dusted it with gold pearl dust, poked holes in it with a ball tool to make it look pebbly, and set them aside so that I could highlight the petals with red pearl dust. I slapped them all together and viola! Black-eyed Gerbers. I couldn't stand to present a sub-par platter of cakes, though, with only six blossoms (turns out I only used five, anyway), among otherwise unadorned cupcakes, so I molded the rest of the fondant in some molds I already had, and painted them to give them a watercolor effect. Presto! A cupcake presentation that almost looked like it was meant to be that way!

I was inordinately proud. I snapped photo after photo. I carried them triumphantly through through the building, secretly hoping someone would be in the hallway to see (I dumped the brownies on Sean to carry). We get there, and everyone ooohs and aaaaahs over the cupcakes--especially after they realize that the daisies are sugar--and then attack the brownies like chocolate-loving wolves. I have never had so many compliments on something--and they were totally an afterthought! Oh, sure, when the "official" dessert time rolled around, people's eyes did roll back into their heads in cream-cheesy ecstasy. But I made those brownies because the hostess told me she liked completely over-the-top, super decadent, ridiculous desserts. They were off the cuff. Unplanned. Approached in the "kitchen sink" method. And after reviews like that.... well, I better write down what I did, quick, before I forget. There will always be a market for amazingly decorated cupcakes. But a smart business woman listens to her customers....even if the reviews take her completely by surprise!

Chocolate wings

What is it about women that makes them feel like they have to constantly prove themselves? Live up to high expectations? Set the bar higher each time they try? Surely I'm not the only one that does such a thing. Coming from a family of artists and over-achievers, I constantly felt like I was struggling to establish myself in a unique talent. My mother is a fantastic artist and interior decorator, my sister is a stellar athlete that competes on the national level, my other sister is an incredible artist and the epitome of supermom...and then there's me. Oh sure, I got good grades. I really enjoyed acting and did a good job of it in high school. I quickly became mediocre at a lot of different things, and stuck with almost none of them.  I have always been a fan of cooking and such, but it has only been in the last few years that I have truly awakened my love of baking--and baking, I think, is where I express my artistic side.

The first time I brought a cake to my in-laws, I spent forever on it because I wanted to make a good impression. Then I realized that I had trapped myself. I had gone out of the gate with my best work--now the bar was getting higher and higher for me to top myself every time! It really didn't matter... my mother-in-law is a sweet heart and it would never cross her mind to even think about judging me based on culinary ability. This is a fact that I rapidly became grateful for as the cake I made her for mother's day lost half of its icing in an undignified slump after I went over a speed bump (the perils of icing a cake that's not cooled all the way!). And I was even more grateful for my in-law's laid back nature when my little brother-in-law requested a 3D bunny cake for his birthday... and the head fell off when my husband was driving it over to the party. Here you go, Anthony! A beheaded bunny cake! Luckily, there's not much that icing can't fix.

In fairness to myself, I think that I jumped on the cupcake bandwagon a little before everything hit the big time and suddenly cupcakes were haute couture.  Haute couture or not, I do enjoy them.  And I also enjoy making elaborate "real" cakes equally as much.  I made a three tier sea-blue fondant cake with sand and pearl-luster seashells for my friend at work as her going-away present. If I had stayed in Anchorage, I was going to be doing wedding cakes for two other friends of mine. I did three ridiculously awesome, three-dimensional Thomas the Train themed cakes for my boss's son's birthday (do you know how hard it is to sculpt Thomas and Percy so that they look like different faces? Sheesh! The creators could at least make them a little different, couldn't they?). But cupcakes... there's something about cupcakes that is intriguing.

Everyone loves cupcakes. They remind you of simpler, happier times. They seem like less of an indulgence. A person who will pass up a piece of cake will happily take a cupcake without a second thought. They're not as messy. They're more convenient.  And they're just so... cute.

The other night I got a little stir crazy. I decided that I felt like baking. So, at 4:30 I started making chocolate butterflies. It was sunny and bright out and I had hopes of spring... so I made blue and white butterflies to put on top of my special creamsicle flavored cupcakes. I made them minis, since minis seem to go even faster than regular cupcakes. I ended up making 48 minis. That's 96 individually piped free-handed chocolate wings (more, really, if you count the ones I broke). 48 antennae. 48 little piped bodies. 48 orange-frosted little cakes of deliciousness. And you know what? I must be getting faster. The whole thing took me about 3.5 hours... and I was by no means a model of efficiency. I kept getting frustrated at the temperamental chocolate. Antennae kept breaking. My bottle of nonpareils went skipping across the counter and the tiny white candy beads went skittering everywhere. But the cupcakes turned out pretty awesome.

I sent them to work with my husband, and he brought home an empty tupperware carrier and lots of praise...and then I realized it. It's like my in-laws all over again! I've gone out of the gate with some of my best work. So now my question to myself is......how in the HECK do I top that?

The Social Cupcake Network

So first of all, I have to thank my amazing sister for creating this blog for me from the ground up. I guess she got sick of my "what-ifs" and decided to give me a figurative kick in the butt to get me writing. Though I have to say--after looking at the amazing picture she took (of the cupcakes that she baked!) and the post she wrote--I'm wondering why SHE isn't doing it, too!



My officemate in his mid-afternoon meditation.



Life has been a whirlwind for me since this blog was created at Christmas. We've moved from Anchorage, Alaska to Albany, New York--quite a trek by any measure! My husband is a little too good at what he does and got a promotion. As for me, I'm lucky enough that my company is letting me telecommute.  This is great, right? I mean, if there's anything I hate it's the job search. I've done it too many times for my taste.

However...I was really linked in socially to the Anchorage office--shocking, really, since I never really wanted to be in Anchorage in the first place.  So now I find myself literally across the country with no friends or family physically near me, with a cat as my office mate. It goes without saying that he's a real loafer and I have to do all the work around here. The funny thing is.... people were saying that they missed my cupcakes before they were saying that they actually missed ME. I suppose that's a backhanded compliment of sorts.

I made the mistake of trying to go low-carb for Lent. I've had to adjust... I'm too weak to do such a thing, apparently. It was hard, too, because all I really wanted to do was bake. You know Bill Engvall, the comedian that always smokes a cigar and drinks whiskey during his act? He has a bit that he calls, "Here's your sign." Well, what does it say that as I'm in the midst of tech-editing a report about a relocating a river (moving a river! seriously!) for a northern airport that all I can think of doing is make cupcakes?

I figure it's a method of creating a social network, right? I mean, I don't have a cute puppy that I can take for a walk in the park and meet people. I don't pass many people in the hallway. I'm not a mom, so I can't really join a mom's club, unless I want to be an elaborate poseur (seems way too tiring, really). But cupcakes.... everyone loves cupcakes, right?  I figure I'll bake a batch or two and go around and introduce myself to the neighbors... and maybe I'll drop a few cards along the way.

I baked some "mocha break" cupcakes for my husband's work, but unfortunately they didn't come out to my standards.  I still sent them, but luckily nearly half of his office was gone in order to take advantage of use-it-or-lose it vacation days, and I certainly didn't send a card!

So perhaps the moral of the story is that maybe cupcakes aren't my day job yet... but they're certainly my daydream.