Birthdays Galore!

Or just one birthday, that we celebrated for three days! Why? Because we could we had friends visiting, made big dinner plans, etc.
But more importantly, I made red velvet cupcakes. This is new - brand new. I'm not a huge red velvet fan, but the husband is, and he requested red velvet (not brownie ice cream cake, sadness), so I scoured the internet far and wide, and came to the conclusion that most red velvet cakes are the same. But since this baking maven has never steered me wrong, I followed her lead.
What a lead it was! (Admittedly, I made plain old cream cheese frosting.) These red velvet tasted almost like full-on chocolate cake and they were awful pretty (bright red) to boot!

Take a look at the before shot:

And the after:

Yum. Good decision husband!

In other news, Brad Pitt is loving our sunny staircase. 

So lazy.

Happy Birthday to Me (and Us)

Lesson learned: toaster ovens are not for baking cupcakes. (I thought maybe similar to the EZ Bake Oven, but nope.)
Look what happened:

Those are toasted on the top and totally gooey on the inside. Oops.

I still made two dozen* cupcakes and a two-layer cake.
Yes, I kind of did make my own birthday cake, but it was for a party for these birthday boys and girls:


Matt is wearing a Soylent Green t-shirt in this photo, which I thought was pretty funny. Anyway, onwards to my super adventures in the kitchen.

1. On Tuesday night I baked the layer cakes (and I used MATH! to figure out if I needed to double the recipe for the two pans or not. Yes children, math is useful in real life.), then let them cool and stuck them in the freezer until Friday.
The cake recipe is from the Silver Palate Cookbook I think, but it involves a cup of wine. Adult cake I guess.
2. Friday morning I took the cakes out to defrost.
3. Friday post-work I baked some cupcakes. Wait till you hear what I did with them.


4. Saturday morning it was FROSTING time. If you don't know this about me, I love frosting. Not that lame-ass buttercream stuff, but the sugary-sweet kind. Oh yeah. Usually I just eat the frosting from cakes and leave the rest of the cake to scavengers.
Frosting recipe from same cookbook. It involves melting chocolate and butter, then adding it to milk and powdered sugar and vanilla. Yum. Then you have to refrigerate and beat it every 15 minutes. YUMMMM.


5. And I cut up some strawberries.


6. Then I went wild with cupcakes. I used the filling tip from my cupcake frosting set and filled them with chocolate frosting!


7. And I frosted my cakes, adding a layer of strawberries in the middle.
There was a lot of switching things in and out of the fridge because it was HOT and the frosting got a little melty.


8. And I frosted the cupcakes. Some of them got strawberries, some got sprinkles. Check them out! (I didn't get a great picture because things were starting to get hectic, so no cupcake porn sadly. If you want real porn, you can go see Bruno.)


9. And I decorated the cake. I used some vanilla frosting from the can or contrast, and pretty colored sprinkles and star confetti. And more piping tips.


Yes, I put sprinkles only on the white frosting in case you can't tell from this photo.
Maybe I should start taking orders?

Anyway, the cake was excellent. Really really moist, and then a good contrast between strawberries and chocolate frosting. Delicious with ice cream too, but what isn't??? And I did actually eat the cake. I made it, which meant it was awesome, so of course I was going to eat it.
(Just in case you can't tell, I'm really freaking proud of myself!!)


*Less the two that got zapped on the top rack of the convection oven. Jeeez.

Wish you were here...

So, you wish you were here, swimming in the fishbowl of my kitchen year after year.

If you've never been a roommate, boyfriend, rower, coworker, brother, parent, or a Sean to me, right now you wish you could get into that position. I'd say coworker is the only available space right now, soon to be classmate I suppose. (And I anticpate testimonials in these comments from said roommates, boyfriends, rowers, coworkers, brother, parents, and Sean. So at least from my mom.)

Because, this is what I've been up to:

Birthday cupcakes:

I got a "cupcake decorating kit" the last time I was at Target, so I spent some time playing with it and making flowers/stars on the top.

Before you get too blown away by my stupendous skills:
(1) It was funfetti cake mix
(2) And rainbow chip icing, so baking skills were minimal there.
Anyway, Sean still doesn't have these cupcakes for a variety of reasons. Don't blame me, blame Radiohead being at Nissan Sunday night. (Hold on, we could could put a lot of blame on Nissan, but I made it in to see the show, so I'll just say it was wet, but AWESOME!!!!!)

Molasses cookies (!!!!)

In my baby's first big jump into the pool of life, she cannonballed in with some very serious molasses cookies. By serious, I mean seriously delicious. Now that I can actually cream the butter & sugar, the cookie is so much better - and so is my wrist. Plus, I bought a cookie scoop and that makes stuff way easier too! I am now about 2 steps closer to opening a bakery I think. Whole lot of good this next degree would do me then.

So, many more tricks & treats where these came from, since I bought a lot of butter today and have chocolate chips and butterscotch chips in the cupboard.







And pizza
With some props to Trader Joe's for the dough & cheese, and to Paul Newman for the sauce, but courtesy of my oven... This one actually turned out round and pretty, with some bubbles forming under the crust (and I for one love pizza bubbles). Not a thin crust this time, but crispy, and good nonetheless.