Chicago cupcake crawl

This weekend was my trip to Chicago with Kelly to visit Megan. It was a great time, and actually the weather wasn't that bad. Unfortunately, Kansas had prepared me for freezing temperatures, and even snow flurries wasn't going to stop us from going on Michigan Ave. Also, we did a cupcake crawl, visiting five different cupcake bakeries. Originally we planned for eight, but after a certain point, they're too darn far apart! Here is my trip in pictures.

First, we went to Sprinkles Bakery, which was made famous in California (and whose founder is a judge on Cupcake Wars!). We got a black and white, which was a chocolate cake with white frosting (left), a chai latte cupcake (back) and chocolate marshmallow, which is also the first picture up top. The cupcakes were excellent! The chai one was very fall-y. The marshmallow filling in the chocolate marshmallow was great too.


Next we visited More Cupcakes, which Megan gets to her office all the time. We got a "flight" of these mini cupcakes, which were all alcohol-based. From the bottom, they were margarita, pina colada, pomegranate mojito, lemon drop, gin and juice and white russian.


They were very creative and tasty, although you couldn't really taste the alcohol in them. I think the pomegranate mojito one was my favorite, because it had a little bit of pomegranate filling.


Kelly also got a chocolate hazelnut one here, with a hazelnut bark. I'm not a huge fan of chocolate, but it was pretty good, especially with its filling.


The next day we went to Swirlz Cupcakes. They had a very pretty spread, as you can see.


There we got vanilla with chocolate icing, red velvet and the surprise cupcake (top), which was a chocolate cupcake with a raspberry icing. Megan got the gluten-free version, which was surprisingly good. The icing on the vanilla cake was unbelievable. I liked my red velvet, but I like my cream cheese icing colder.


Next was Molly's Cupcakes, which wins the award for most interesting bakery we visited. Inside, there were swings for sitting at the counter. Yes, swings. The tables were awesomely bright colors, and the music was Taylor Swift and Ke$ha. Needless to say, we liked it.


The variety of flavors was amazing too. They had basic flavors, but we went for the interesting stuff. Starting at top left and going clockwise, we got the "Ron Bennington," chocolate peanut butter Butterfinger, which had completely ganache-based frosting and a peanut butter filling. Next was the cake batter cupcake, which had a cake batter filling as well (picture above). Then the "Cookie Monster," the cookie dough cupcake, with cookie dough filling. Then the peanut butter Nutella, with a light frosting and Nutella filling.


I think this bakery was my favorite of the trip. The atmosphere was so fun, and the choices in cupcakes were just crazy. And everything tasted wonderful.


Our last bakery was Sweet Mandy B's, Megan's favorite bakery close to her place in Lincoln Park. I went there last time I was in town, but they didn't have a whole lot of variety that time. This time, they had a crazy amount of sweets, going way beyond cupcakes.


They had chocolate-covered pretzels, cookies, all kinds of sweets and various cupcakes, obviously. Kelly got a snickerdoodle cupcake. I got the lemon and white with purple frosting. Megan got chocolate.


This was my favorite basic cupcake. The cake was moist, and the frosting was unbelievable. I can see why it's so popular.


We definitely ate our fair share of cupcakes, but with the amount of walking we did around the city, I think it was fair to eat that many :) Now here's the rest of the trip in pictures, starting with this one, which was our view when landing in Chi-town.

Kelly and I went to the Art Institute of Chicago. These were some of our favorite pieces, which played on words. The one on the right is named 4 1/2 oxen. So cool.


We visited Shedd Aquarium, one of my favorite places in the city. The hour+ wait, however, was not fun. Worth it though.


They have a pretty awesome variety of animals.


My favorites, of course, are the otters, which are hard to get a decent picture of because they're always moving!


And of course, we definitely hit up Michigan Avenue, a must for Chicago shopping. We went twice. All in all, this was a great trip with great friends. Definitely a nice break from life in a gorgeous city.

Homer Simpson would be proud (3 of 8 goals met)

When it starts getting to the end of my work week, I start to get excited. And unable to sleep. So I do things like stay up late to fix my bedside table that's been broken. Or write stories that or due. Or write blog post entries for posting later :) Tonight is my Friday after a very long week. We're just getting into the swing of sports at work, which means lots of posting of game stuff that I'm not totally used to yet. I'll get better at it, but the first few nights are pretty tough. Speaking of sports, though, how about those Jayhawks? Granted, I slept through the whole Georgia Tech game, because that's the middle of the night for me. But it's quite the turnaround from losing 6-3 the week before. Who knows where this season will lead. Plus, sports means fall, which is my favorite season. For one, my birthday is in fall. But I've also discovered a new favorite time of day — driving to and from work. It's dark out, the weather is great and it's perfect for rolling down the windows and turning the music up. It's cathartic and clears my mind, and it's frankly a perfect few minutes. Too bad pretty soon it will be freezing out!


I felt like more cupcakes this week, and for some reason snickerdoodle was at the top of my list. I was flipping through my Martha Stewart Cupcake book and it just popped out at me. I don't even like snickerdoodles that much, but anything is better in cupcake form I think. Plus, I had a new piping tip for icing, so I wanted to try that out. A cinnamony cake, a quick buttercream and then cinnamon sugar on top. Voila! A tasty rainy day cupcake (and we've had plenty of rainy days lately!).


Here's where we get to the Homer Simpson part. I also went to my Aunt Betty's house last week for another baking extravaganza. One thing I made I can't talk about yet, other than saying I joined something called Daring Baker. It's a monthly challenge that a bunch of bloggers do together, but you have to wait till a certain day to reveal it. So that date hasn't come yet. The other thing we made was doughnuts, another of my baking goals. All you die-hard (or even just normal) Simpsons fans know Homer loves his doughnuts, and now I know why. They take a while because it's like normal bread dough with all the rising and such, but believe me, that day I needed some dough to knead to take my anger out on. Anyway, when I was in NYC, I bought a doughnut cutter (of all things, right?). So we made the doughnuts, frying them in a cast-iron pan and everything, then adding a chocolate glaze. Lemme tell you, I will never look at doughnuts the same way again. They were SO good. And I'm not even that much of a doughnut person! Pretty damn tasty though.


Last, I decided to do a repeat of a dessert I made in June. They were cookie dough cupcakes, and every bit as yummy as you can imagine. Kelly helped me make them, and even piped some of the frosting (this is significant because she generally complains that I only let her measure. So there, she frosted!). I just tasted them, and it really is like eating a completely rich chocolate chip cookie, because it's a chocolate chip cookie cupcake filled with eggless cookie dough and topped with a cookie dough-flavored icing. A friend at work said it was in his top 3 cupcakes ever, and he's eaten a lot of different cupcakes. I will take that as a compliment :)

So now I'm off to accomplish other things before my Friday. Can't wait for a couple days off to relax...and take care of everything I haven't had time to before now. Ciao!

Mobbing the brownies

Well I'm officially overwhelmed with schoolwork and all the stuff I'm doing. So naturally I decide to blog. Specifically, I'm setting a goal for myself to blog once per week. We'll see if it keeps up.

It's birthday time right now. Last weekend Drew and I went to KC to celebrate his mom's birthday. Technically, her birthday was more than a week ago, but she and Drew's dad went to St. John's. So jealous. Anyway, we ate at Blue Koi (which has like the best dumplings ever!). Then we watched the KU-K-state game and drove home, where I made Snickerdoodle cupcakes. See, I've made a variation before for my Fourth of July baking bonanza. But I'd never made Martha's version, and I think we all know how much I like Martha's recipes. This was also my first baked item using the beater blade, a special mixer attachment for my KitchenAid that scrapes the edges of the bowl while it's mixing. I can't tell you how excited I was to get this! Originally I bought it on a trip to Nebraska Furniture Mart after lunch with Tara, but I managed to buy one that didn't fit my machine. Judging from a bin of opened and discounted mixers, a lot of other people have too. But yes, I get unnaturally excited about attachments for my mixer. ANYWAY, Weston has been bugging me about snickerdoodle cupcakes forever, but I don't really like carrying cupcakes around campus, so only wanted to bring them up on a Sunday. The recipe calls for some weird meringue-like frosting, but I'm more of a buttercream type of lady, so I went with a cinnamon buttercream frosting instead. The finished product, which are light and fluffy because you beat the hell out of the butter for the batter, actually include five sticks of buttter between the cakes and frosting. That's why they tasted SO good. Butter makes everything better. Drew really liked them, as did Weston, and also Drew's roommate.

I was definitely late to my class Monday. I think it's going to be one of those weeks. It's a class where you have to get there right at 9 a.m. and take a quiz. If you're late, you get 1 out of 5 points for writing down your name. I'm always super tired, though, and often get bored. Traffic was naturally bad and I got behind two super slow vehicles on the way to campus, so got up to campus at like 8:59. So I just didn't go. Apparently I've entered the close-to-completely-apathetic stage of my senior year. Grades don't matter, right? ;) No, I know they do. But sometimes productivity rules. This morning, sleep ruled. I skipped my second class of the semester, during which apparently we didn't even do what we were supposed to. Sigh. I'm currently researching an in-depth project, assigning out projects for our yearbook and interning at the local paper.

I'm noticing this is leaving very little time. Naturally, last night I filled that time with baking a new recipe. My friend Emily pointed out the blog Smitten Kitchen to me, specifically this peanut butter brownie. It's kind of a cakey-blondieish brownie. Lots of peanut butter and chocolate chips. On top is a dark chocolate ganache (I made double what they said; didn't use it all but definitely liked it with more than the recipe called for). So I brought these in to the newsroom today, and I think my pan literally got mobbed. Taylor had to hold it up high above everyone so I could cut them. I think it's safe to say people liked them, and I got my professional blog photographer, Tanner Grubbs, to take the photo again mid-pan.

My next project is going to be for Drew's birthday, which is this Friday. He turns 23. We're all going out, obviously. His mom made him cookie cake, a holiday staple at their house. So I'm considering making (or attempting to make) ice cream cake. Drew only reads sports blogs so I'm safe to say that on here. But if you know him, don't tell him. I'm thinking of getting his favorite ice cream combo from Cold Stone (cake batter with cookie dough mixed in) and putting it with some kind of cake, although I'm not what flavor to make the cake part of it. I'm going to have to research how to make this kind of thing too. If I can't figure it out, I guess we'll eat ice cream with cookie dough AND cake chunks mixed in.

Snickerdoodles to welcome you

As a first post, I feel the need to explain myself. I'm a senior at KU nearing the end of my tenure in college and looking for a journalism job. I'm editor of my school paper, which sucks up a lot of my time. Sometimes I get to write, but often I come home just exhausted with my brain fried.

So I bake.

It's a weird obsession that seemed to start only this semester, or rather this summer. I've always liked to make cookies — Mom and I regularly made oatmeal scotchies, chocolate chip cookies, whatever. And by we made, I mean she told me what ingredients to get out of the pantry.

This summer I worked with a couple people who liked to bake. We would talk about cookies or cupcakes we were making that weekend. Then came Fourth of July, and Dad asked me to bring a dessert. I couldn't decide, so I brought four. Yup, that's right, four. I made somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 individual servings: snickerdoodle cupcakes, red velvet red, white and blue cookie sandwiches, chocolate peanut butter brownies and red, white and blue cupcakes.

And then I was hooked.

Now, my newsroom regularly gets fed with snacks. The most recent was a batch of snickerdoodles a la Martha Stewart. That woman knows her recipes. My photo editor Weston had been begging for some snickerdoodles, so I made some (he said they could have been softer — I beg to differ).

Also on the menu? Key lime bars, also courtesy of Martha. I've made them once before, but that time I only had a hand mixer, and five minutes of whisking with one of those is not the most fun I've ever had. My 22nd birthday (and my wonderful grandma!) brought me a brand new shiny white Kitchenaid mixer, my new best friend. This time, I got to just set the mixer to speed 10 and walk away, and voila! key lime bars. Well, not exactly, but let's just say it was a heck of a lot easier.

That was my baking of the week. I know I haven't explained myself or my strange obsession, but at least it's an obsession that everyone can enjoy.

So here's the plan. I come home and I'm either stressed or bored, and I bake. And then I'll write about it, and what happened to make me want to be in the kitchen.

Enjoy!