History One Day Will Rave

I'm on a bit of a losing streak with Words with Friends. I've lost five of my last six matches. But, I got a great bingo today, which I hope means that I will soon be winning games again.

When I played this word I couldn't help but think of the Muppet version of The Frog Prince when Taminella keeps shutting up Robin by stuffing popovers in his mouth. "Have a popover froggy!"

Pumpkin Muffins

I liberated some cans of pumpkin from my grandparents' house because of their expiration dates. I wanted to make pumpkin cupcakes with them, but then it dawned on me that I could make pumpkin muffins. The recipe comes from the same muffin book I always use, but I made it with a combination of AP and whole wheat flour. They were dense, but not in a bad way. Pictured is a jumbo-sized one that I made with the leftover batter. The recipe was supposed to make 12, but it made a dozen regular-sized and four jumbos. That's nearly enough leftover batter for another dozen!

Cake for Hire

Some people have suggested that I sell my baked goods. Here's the problem, (I've said it before, but I'll say it again) I'm a great baker but a lousy decorator. For instance, would you pay for this cake?

Good picture of lettering (made with mini chocolate chips)

Good picture of frosting

The above cake was chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. To make the cake a little richer, I added some instant coffee. It gave it a coffee undertone but didn't turn it into a mocha cake. The frosting was a little thick so I thinned it out with a bit more milk. The kid graduating said it was the best cake ever! High praise from a true connoisseur.

Here's a cake that I did not decorate. It was from a local bakery and was served at a party held to watch the last episode of Lost. I like how they did the frosting flames and splashing water. The cake was your basic chocolate with white icing. The taste was just okay, but isn't it nicely decorated?

I think there is a market for my cupcakes, cookies and muffins since those baked goods require little to no artistic talent to make them look appetizing.

Listen To This

I downloaded a new app for my iPod Touch called Top 100's by Year by Bing. The app streams the "top 100" songs from each year from 1947 to 2010, one year at a time. The app information describes the tunes as, "songs that have stood the test of time" so they aren't necessarily the most popular songs of the years. Although the songs play on a shuffle mode, you can skip ones that you don't want to hear.

I'm not sure I would have paid for it since I don't generally buy apps for my iPod, but it's worth a free download. It's completely entertaining to listen to songs from a particular year. But I wonder who ranked the songs on the lists? Is Free Bird really the top song of 1973?

Blue Velvet Cupcakes

One of my colleagues recently had a baby boy so we had cupcakes to celebrate! I used the red velvet cake recipe, but substituted blue dye for red, which somehow produced cupcakes that were kind of green. The picture doesn't quite do the color justice. The cream cheese frosting was tinted light blue, which was also hard to capture in the picture.

Red velvet isn't my favorite cake, to be sure, but I love the frosting!

Day and Night Baked Goods

It seems that I forgot to post these pictures of my Easter baked goods. The first is Sour Cream Coffee Cake, from the KitchenAid cookbook. The second is one of the cupcakes that I decorated to look like an Easter basket with jellybeans as colored eggs and green-tinted coconut for grass. The cupcakes were basic yellow cake with buttercream frosting.

The coffee cake was served after brunch and the cupcakes were dessert after dinner. Both were delicious and pretty.

I separated the pictures as much as I could because they just looked weird next to each other. Either the cupcake looked giant or the bundt cake looked miniature.

Baseball Cut-Out Cookies

I made these for my oldest nephew's little league fundraiser. They are Grandma Cuckoo's Swedish Sugar Cookies. The frosting is a basic buttercream and the seams are drawn with red sugar. I tried to make them thicker than I do at Christmas, but they were still a pretty thin cookie.