Spaghetti!

A wonderfully corny pick-up line about spaghetti inspired these cupcakes, which i recently made for a wedding reception here in Bonita. They are vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting "noodles." The "meatballs" are coconut and chocolate candies - a d.i.y. recipe I got from the Everyday with Rachael Ray magazine. I used a homemade strawberry glaze as the spaghetti sauce.

Pretty cute if I say so myself.

(these were even adorable before they were finished with the sauce!)

Signature Cupcake?

A few weeks ago, while snacking on my absolute favorite Dark Chocolate Almonds with Sea Salt and Turbinado Sugar from Trader Joe's, I thought that all those flavors together would make a pretty awesome cupcake. So, I decided to try an almond cream filled cupcake with a chocolate ganache and a pinch of raw sugar and sea salt. I thought they would be pretty rich, so I finally invested in a mini muffin tin so I could finally make mini cupcakes.

I used Martha Stewart's recipe for her Almond Cream Filling. Steps one through four result in an almond custard and the addition of heavy cream in step five turns the custard into a cream. Well, we forgot step five, so attempt #1 at this signature cupcake was an almond custard filled cupcake. They're pretty cute, though.

Cupcakes!

So when I was lazing around at home for a few weeks this summer and getting addicted to stumbleupon all over again, I started baking. And then I started taking pictures of things I was baking. And then, people started asking me to bake them stuff! Who knew?