To either end of the spectrum: Fruity Pebbles cupcakes and vegan cupcakes, plus cheesecake and bars

It's been a busy week baking-wise for me, and I did something I've absolutely never done before: baked something vegan! On request, of course. I like cooking with eggs and dairy most of the time.

I've pretty much just been working recently, with a couple days off thrown in there. I'm counteracting all my baking by ramping up my gym attendance. I just joined a new one and have started going after work at like 6:30 a.m. It's the perfect time to go, because hardly anyone is there and if I just went home, I'd still be awake anyway. Might as well tire myself out so I can go home and fall asleep right away, right?


This week only half of my baking has been cupcakes...which is a step down from last week. I started by making triple citrus bars, something that had been on my dessert list to try for a while. Plus, I got a new zester, so I had to put it to good use! The bars had an animal cracker crust, something I'd never made before. Definitely didn't follow directions the first time and it was waaaay too butter. Try two, though, was fine. I had a lot of try two's this week. Anyway, these had orange, lemon and lime zest in them, plus orange, lemon and lime juice. Not my favorite bar dessert ever, but still not bad.


Before I took the bars into work, I stopped by a friend's house. He has cancer, and he's younger than me. I went to kindergarten with him, and school through eighth grade. He was my first crush ever. He was a runner. He's since gotten married and has an adorable boy. He has always been one of the healthiest people I know. He's not someone I keep in touch with regularly, but a mutual friend said people were coming over to see him before he finished his chemo, and I wanted to show I was thinking of him. I guess this is all part of growing up though; dealing with these horrible things.


My friend Sarah from work had a birthday this week, and I told her I would make her cupcakes for the event. She requested vegan, which is a pretty foreign concept to me. But I'm an avid watcher of Cupcake Wars on Food Network (big surprise, right?) and the most recent winner when she asked had been a vegan baker. I remembered I'd seen one of her recipes while going through my baking blogs, so I decided to try it: creme-filled chocolate orange cupcakes. With no dairy. Eek! Ultimately, the recipe wasn't that different from a normal cupcake, baking the cake with oil instead of eggs. It did introduce me to an unfamiliar oil, though. Coconut. It is not my friend. The consistency is strange to me and it took a take two to get it right. But a nice chocolate cake baked up, so whatever. Then I made orange butter-less buttercream to fill it, dairy-less ganache to top it and candied orange peel for a garnish. It might have been the biggest mess I've ever made in the kitchen, but ultimately worth it. They turned out tasty! I think I'll use this girl's recipes if I ever get a vegan request again.


On one of my days off, Drew and I had some good friends from school come over and eat dinner. For that, I made pink lemonade cheesecake, another sweet that had been tempting me from my bookmarks. Drew helped, and he actually candied the lemon peel all by himself. I can officially add that to his list of kitchen skills. I thought it was pretty tasty, too. Good summer dessert.


Then today, I was watching the newer episode of Cupcake Wars and got inspired to bake again. I was planning to make belated birthday cupcakes for my friend Nick at work, and I thought it would be a perfect time to use my Flintstones cupcake toppers from Bake It Pretty. So I decided to make Fruity Pebbles cupcakes...ya know, because it's the Flintstones cereal? So I made my favorite yellow cake recipe, mixed in some Fruity Pebbles, frosted them and dipped them in more Fruity Pebbles. I thought they were so cute! And not as ridiculously sweet as you'd think, either. Not bad for no recipe!

So now I will need to branch out. I'm thinking Cap'n Crunch cupcakes maybe? More vegan? Or cake pops... I will have to work up more courage to try those!

Drinks in desserts: pink lemonade pie and cherry limeade cupcakes

Today is my day off. So far I've caught up on sleep and gotten a haircut. Pretty active day, eh? Oh well, that's what weekends (since this is mine) are all about.

It's been fairly active in Lawrence lately. We had a monster of a storm yesterday; it was raining so hard you couldn't see more than three feet out the window. Parts of Lawrence flooded, I-70 was closed and KC got hit really hard too. Just another Kansas summer. I guess it's not boring, though.


It's been a week since I got back from my trip out to Lewis, which is always a good time, but also kind of sad. I love going on the road trip with just my dad and grandma, because we don't do stuff limited to just family very often. But it's also filled with sad memories — death of my maternal grandfather, death of my cousin's little girl, death of my dad's brother when my dad was 11. I mean, I guess that's how life goes, but it's so sad to think about all that in one day. After we plant flowers, we always do a mini-tour of the area around Lewis of places back in my grandma's and dad's life, the first being a farmhouse that was the first place my dad lived. He went inside it and it was abandoned, run-down, smelled bad, everything. It's weird to think that if I went inside the house my dad built for me to grow up in I'd probably be really apprehensive too. It's not abandoned, but it's been completely changed. Anyway, point is, the trip is always very sad, but happy too. I still have my grandma to go with, and that's definitely always an experience. Plus, every time I go I learn more about her life. We went through her cedar chest and found both her wedding gown and a plaque from her college sorority days...in 1941. Those letters in the picture are ones my grandpa wrote her before they were married and he was stationed at various army bases, dated 1940-1942. Incredible.


The weekend after coming home from that, I really wanted an easy dessert to make. I was browsing the LJWorld sites and found a food blog they have called the Flying Fork. Somehow I stumbled upon a pink lemonade pie that looked really yummy and easy. Originally I wanted to make pink lemonade cheesecake, but the recipes all called for chilling overnight, and I didn't really want to wait. So I ended up with an easy pink lemonade pie — four ingredients! Okay, so it wasn't technically as much baking as it was chilling, but it was dessert and tasted really yummy. That night AC came to town, and we all went to see the A-Team, which I actually liked. I know critics hated it, but for a movie about a show that was already really ridiculous, they did a good job. The casting didn't bother me either, and I thought it would. Murdock is still my favorite :)

Saturday I worked dayside at the newspaper, and I got the best assignment ever. I got to cover the cat show! I know that sounds horrible to some people, but I have no issue spending part of the day with kitty cats. One Maine Coon was the biggest I'd ever seen; he was longer than the torso of the guy carrying him. There were definitely some characters there, including one guy whose Maine Coons were named things like Francoonstein and Coonzilla. Creativity, yes! So I went to the show and then wrote the story for the paper and put together an audio slideshow. It was a fun day at work.


If you couldn't tell, I've been on a cupcake kick lately, and that continued after my cat extravaganza. I made cherry limeade cupcakes to take into the newsroom. Man, those cupcakes are lime-y. The recipe uses limeade concentrate out of the freezer — the whole can! They'd be really tasty as just lime-flavored cupcakes too. Then on the frosting I departed from her recipe and kind of just made my own grenadine frosting. All in all, I thought they were pretty good, but I'd kick up the cherry flavor a bit next time.

A couple days ago I made brownies just for fun. No picture of those, though. They were eaten before I could shoot a pic.

Now it's time for me to head to the gym to counteract all this baking. I joined Body Boutique this week, so now I just have to make sure I actually go on a regular basis. I guess the nice thing about working in a newsroom (among many other things) is that when I bake, there are always a bunch of people willing to eat the desserts. Plus, cupcakes always brighten my day, so I hope they brighten other people's as well.

Summer cupcakes and pie

I've officially been a college graduate for a week and a half. Now I'm a working girl. It's taking a little bit of getting used to. On the bright side, it gives me more time to bake and try new things. On the down side, I'm experiencing the end of college — namely, people moving away. I have friends moving all over the country, which I guess has happened before, except now I'm not going back to school after it happens. I imagine that when fall semester comes, it will be even stranger. I always have this feeling at the beginning of a break, where I've been so stressed with schoolwork that when it's over, I still feel like I should be doing it. I bet I get over that though :)

I've been watching a lot of movies. Saw Cabaret for the first time...jury's still out on what I think of that. And the Fantastic Mr. Fox. Definitely a cute movie. I watched Kiss Me Kate too — any musical lovers should appreciate that because Howard Keel is in it and his voice is amazing. Then some old favorites too, like Grease and 10 Things I Hate About You. "My insurance doesn't cover PMS!"

I've had a lot of time to bake lately, which is always fun. I made pink lemonade cupcakes about a week ago, sort of following the recipe. The weather was crappy and rainy, and I thought something like that seemed spring-y. You put in pink lemonade concentrate, but I added some of the powdered kind too, which made it extra pink-flavored. Same with the icing, which I also modified. Overall, they were pretty tasty, but totally weird. I guess I'm used to chocolate cupcakes or vanilla or something like that. I liked them though.


Then Keane came to town for his final goodbye before moving all the way up to Minnesota. He's working in the industry he loves, but I'm still sad to see him go. On the plus side, I guess, friends moving away mean lots of fun little trips for me to take! Anyway, Keane and AC came, and I made key lime pie cupcakes, which I've made before but apparently not written about. They're so tasty! You make a graham crust for them, and then a lime cupcake. Then you put in a key lime-marscapone filling, and top it off with key lime frosting. I'm not so hot at filling cupcakes, and might try a different method soon if I can't get better at it. But, they taste wonderful! Even though they fall apart when eating them. I made them initially for the guys, but gave them out elsewhere as well. The night out was fun too, and involved three boys singing "Shoop" in my car, putting the child lock on the windows and doing the Safety Dance.


My next project was to make bundt cake. I got this awesome bundt pan for graduation from a family friend (lemme tell you, my graduation gifts definitely had a theme, and they were all about cooking and baking). I'd really been wanting to try it, and stumbled across a recipe for Jones soda bundt cake. I've never made bundt cake before, but I had to try it. Kelly came over and helped me make the cake, which is seriously like half butter half sugar. It was flavored with Jones soda cream soda and berry lemonade, conveniently my two favorite flavors. The recipe called for just a normal glaze over the top, but I made glazes of each of the sodas instead. It was an awesome cake and very moist.


On my day off this week, I went to my aunt's house to make rhubarb pie. I've kind of shied away from pies because I'm not real confident in my crust-making abilities, so she taught me how to do it. My first crust was definitely a disaster, but a tip — roll it out between two sheets of waxed paper. Definitely helps. We made three pies, three different crusts, all from Joy of Cooking. The first was the normal pastry crust with strawberry and rhubarbs. The second, the better crust with just rhubarb. And finally, the best crust with fresh strawberries and rhubarb. The third was definitely best, but I guess that's what you get for putting more butter in, right? They all ended up really great, so now I guess I'm at least semi-ready to make my own pie crust. Fourth of July calls, right? Apple pie? I think so. Maybe I'll even brave making a lattice top.

So now I settle into summer and working. I'll leave you on an entertaining note — or at least I thought it was funny. I hope everyone watched Looney Tunes at least a little bit (and I still do if I get the chance!). Remember the cat that Pepé Le Pew always chased after? We knew she was French because she said "Le meow, le purrrr." So, my dad's in the Czech Republic right now for an airshow and sent me an e-mail today with the subject line "Czech pussycats" (I seem to always get animal e-mails...wonder why). In the body it said "Czmeow......czprrrrr!" I thought it was hysterical...coulda just been me though :)