Coming Soon... But Not Soon Enough

I had my camera with me today, and I was stopped at a red light so I took this picture.

Melt Bar and Grilled

I'm going to the westside location tomorrow, but can't wait for the eastside one to open soon! It's just about a mile from my house!

St. Patrick's Day

I made cupcakes for dessert on St. Patrick's Day. They were served with Irish coffee after our corned beef and cabbage dinner.

Yellow cupcakes with Mrs. Millman's chocolate frosting and shamrock sprinkles.

I also took some cupcakes to work, and they received rave reviews. The building where I work was on the parade route, but we couldn't see much from 39 floors up. I did get a good shot of the blimp, though.

Burst of Lime Ginger Cake

This cake was made for my friend's belated birthday celebration on Oscar night. Since I usually provide dessert for our Oscar party, the birthday girl requested this cake from her KitchenAid mixer cookbook, which is vastly different from the one that came with my mixer. Her book has color pictures, more recipes and brand name ingredients.

Pretty as a picture.

This cake wouldn't have been my first choice, but it was good. It had a lighter texture than gingerbread, but was still pretty dense. It had a heavy molasses taste that contrasted nicely with the sweet lime and cream cheese filling. Delicious with pumpkin spice coffee!

I forgot to post my Oscar picks for this year before the telecast, but I'm happy to report that I won the Oscar pool for the third year straight with 15/24 right.

Cream Cheese Muffins

I had some cream cheese in the fridge that didn't have a purpose so I found a recipe in my Ultimate Muffin Book for cream cheese muffins. The recipe's description said that the taste would be like cheesecake, but it really wasn't. But, they were delicious; slightly sweet with a hint of lemon, which was surprising because the recipe had a whole tablespoon of lemon juice. They were a little denser than most muffins and had a nice crunchy exterior.

I'd definitely make them again if I had some extra cream cheese lying around.

Words with Friends

I've been playing Words with Friends on my iPod a lot. Occasionally, I get bored while waiting for my opponent to play a word so I start a game between myself and Player 2. I used to think Player 2 was better than me, then this happened.

I don't really like or use the word utilize that often, but I'm glad it came to me in this game. 145 is the most I've scored on one word so far.

Wanna play? Words with Friends is a free app for the iPod Touch and the iPhone. I'm accepting new challengers.

Not Pictured

I did some significant baking this month. I made my oldest nephew's birthday cake mid-month, which was delicious but kind of ugly. It was a three-layer yellow cake with strawberry glaze in the middle layers and a blueberry glaze on the top. The blueberry glaze, as you might imagine, was more gray than blue and might have been striking on a chocolate cake, but was rather blah on a golden cake. It was exactly what the birthday boy wanted so it was perfect. But not pretty.

I made some chocolate chip football cookies for the Superbowl, but I didn't post a picture since they looked identical to the ones I made last year.

I almost took a picture of the spinach pie I made last week. Homemade crust and everything. Maybe next time.

Almost Classic Cake

Special Birthday Cake with Semi-Sweet Chocolate Buttercream frosting.
3/4 of the whole cake

I was asked to make a cake as the dessert for a fried chicken dinner. Since most of the attendees watch their sugar intake, I thought I'd try using the bag of Splenda for Baking that's been in my pantry for a while. (I called the 800 number to make sure it was still good. Turns out it never goes bad!) The cake wasn't as moist as I would have liked, but for a first attempt it was pretty good.

The frosting was outstanding. The recipe was a mix of Mrs. Millman's and semi-sweet chocolate buttercream. I used 12 ounces of chocolate chips (melted and cooled), a stick of butter (cold), 1 cup of powdered sugar, a little vanilla and some milk to thin it out.

I left a little bit of the cake unfrosted at the request of the host, but cut it out of the picture because it looked weird.