Salt Lake City vacation

I just got back from vacation in Salt Lake City. Beautiful, no? One of my best friends, Keane, lives there, so I took some time off to go hang out.

See? Keane. (Disclaimer: lots of pictures in this post, both of yummy food and beautiful sites, like mountains and such.)

We had some awesome doughnuts at Beyond Glaze. We got: cherry limeade, peach cobbler, cookies and cream and chocolate peanut butter.

Went to two different places on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives: Lone Star Taqueria, and...

Blue Plate Diner, which had the best breakfast ever. And an old fashioned soda fountain.

Raspberry soda.

We went to Park City, where we toured High West Distillery and tried some whiskey, and...

saw some Banksy.

We saw the Mormon Salt Lake Temple. It's very pretty lit up at night.

And walked around the Capitol.

We visited Hatch Family Chocolates, which was on TLC. 

We drove up to Ogden to Hill Air Force Base Museum, where my grandpa was stationed during WWII. It was incredible to see where he spent so much time. 

There was a display about the Doolittle Raiders there. That tall one? That's Jacob Manch, aka Shorty, one of my grandpa's friends. One time my grandpa picked him up in LA in a bomber in the '40s.

And then there were the mountains.

In the snow...

and when it was clear. It was still sort of fall up there, but the first snow of the winter came the same day I did.

We hiked up into them a bit on one of the nicer days.

And just wandered around admiring them. It's a lot different than Kansas, that's for sure.

It was a great trip and a much-needed break. Here's to vacation!

To Michigan and Mom: Chocolate cream pie, chocolate meringue kisses and raspberry lemonade cupcakes

I swear, I'm bad luck on a plane. Or more like, in the terminal waiting for a plane. I went to Michigan to visit Mom this weekend...and ended up being in Wisconsin overnight with a hotel voucher that didn't work. A fan was broken in my plane from KC, and I'm pretty sure more than half our plane missed their connections. If I'd stayed in KC and flown out the next morning, I would have left the airport at 5:45 a.m. I don't know if this is well-known (it is to all my friends), but that time only exists to me if I'm still up from the night before. So Milwaukee it was. To their credit, Frontier was very, very helpful. The woman helping us, Cat, was incredibly chill. Go Cat! Anyway, around 11, I got to the hotel and spent the evening at the bar with my fellow travelers.

This is Lacey. She greeted me when I finally got to Grand Rapids. So did my childhood cat Ziggy and Mom's newer cat, Salem. During the weekend, we went shopping to my favorite food specialty stores up there, went to New Holland Brewpub and had a taster flight of beer (Ichabod Pumpkin Ale was my favorite!) and went to my favorite restaurant there, Graydon's Crossing, which is a combo of colonial English and Indian food and one massive beer list. All in all, a fun trip.

A few fun facts about my mom: she loves chocolate, she sucks at technology and she isn't a baker. So when I visit, she likes me to bake so she can have some and share some with her friends too. First on the list was chocolate cream pie, which I'd made once before at Aunt Betty's. It's from Martha Stewart's new Pies and Tarts book, and it actually holds its shape really well, courtesy of a lot of cornstarch and gelatin. Oh, and it's got lots of chocolate.

Then, naturally, I had some leftover egg whites, so I had to use them, right? In come the chocolate meringue kisses. I've never made chocolate ones before, but I have done some other flavored ones. These honestly tasted like hot chocolate to me, and they were divine. And more chocolate for mom.

And I didn't want to do just chocolate and of course had to make cupcakes, so I did raspberry lemonade ones. It's starting to get fall-like outside, so I'm trying to get in my last summery desserts. This is a lemon cupcake soaked with a raspberry lemonade syrup with raspberry lemonade icing. On top I put a fresh raspberry and a candied lemon peel. Apparently Mom's coworkers liked them.

It was a nice weekend, although cut short because of the darn airplane. Well, here's to hoping my next trip goes better. I'm officially less than a month from visiting Keane in Salt Lake City. Woo hoo!

(Posting to Hoosier Homemade's Cupcake Tuesday.)

A New York minute

Last week, I spent a few days in NYC with my mom. That is, after I got past my almost 5-hour delay on Frontier that was caused by weather but then airline error. Whatever. I got a voucher, so that's nice.


We had a couple days there, days we spent walking/cabbing all over the city seeing cool stuff. A lot of it was food-related, but a lot wasn't. Like this awesome Barbie foosball table at FAO Schwarz. Price tag? $25K. Supposedly because there were only 10 name. I think some scissors and glue could do relatively the same thing.


We just stumbled on a Crumbs Cupcakes on our way to Fifth Avenue. There were SO many choices, like cookie dough, Irish cream and the whopping blackbottom cheesecake brownie, complete with 1090 calories. Yikes! I got that butterscotch one right at the front, which was a vanilla cake with butterscotch frosting and chips. Definitely tasty, and not overwhelming.


I ate it in Bryant Park, where Fashion Week used to be. It had beautiful trees, a great juxtaposition to the skyscrapers behind it.



We spent a fair amount of time on Fifth Avenue, and like I said, spent some time in FAO Schwarz. If I were a child, I would be in heaven. Three floors of toys, ranging from Sesame Street stuffed animals dressed in New York outfits (I may or may not have gotten Cookie Monster dressed in an NYPD uniform) to Harry Potter toys to the giant piano from "Big." On my way out, I saw this wall of Muppets near a station where you can make your own Muppet. If only I had $100 to just waste on this sort of thing. It made me think of my friend Spencer, though, who does puppetry as a profession. So neat. I think I might go watch Muppet Treasure Island now...


We eventually made our way to Dylan's Candy Bar, which has the coolest stairs ever. It's kind of like a little slice of heaven. Every candy imaginable is in this store...I could spend a long time there.


Then we headed down to Serendipity 3 on Lauren's recommendation. The place was very hole-in-the-wall, with lots of Tiffany-style lamps hanging up. The place is famous for its frozen hot chocolate, but we went for the sundae, New York-style, instead: the Forbidden Broadway Sundae. Chocolate blackout cake, vanilla ice cream and yummy hot fudge. No, we did not finish it. Later that day we met Mary down in Soho for dinner and Asher for drinks. Great time seeing both.


We visited Jackie O the next day at the Met. I love me some Warhol.


Then we headed down to Little Italy per on my boss's suggestion. Dennis said to go to this place, Positano, in the heart of Little Italy. It was legitimately the best pasta I'd ever had. Vodka penne? Awesome. Finished the whole plate, and I NEVER do that when I eat.


Then on down the street, after a quick shop at a street vendor, to La Bella Ferrara, another place Dennis said to go. He said the cannoli was the best he'd ever tasted, but the whole spread was pretty darn impressive.


But I followed Dennis's suggestion and got the cannoli (which, I'd like to point out, is a dessert my mother had never heard of. Really). It was also amazing. Perfectly fried outer part, great pastry cream inside. Mmmmm.


Then we walked a few blocks north to Papabubble, a place I saw on Food Network's "Kid in a Candy Store." It was so worth the walk. Look at all those different kinds of candies!


They were making candy when we were there. They combine the different stripes into one big log, which they keep on the reddish table, which is warmed to keep the candy malleable. They were putting it through that machine to cut it, which if I remember correctly is the only machine they use for candy.


This is what they ended up with: strawberry-flavored candy. I got a container of various flavors, and it's already gone. Now if only they had one of these in Kansas.


While we were walking in Little Italy, we saw some observant kitties. Had to take a photo, of course.


We also made the trek to Mood Fabrics, which is a place "Project Runway" devotees know well. It's where designers on the show shop, and it was three floors of fabric goodness. Definitely amazing.

Last on the list was Broadway, and we went to see "Wicked." I'd seen it before in Chicago, but nothing beats Broadway, and this show held true to form. This is the stage before the show, which is easily one of the best I've ever seen. No one makes mistakes on Broadway.

All in all, it was a pretty fun trip. We covered a lot of ground in a couple days, and ended up with very sore feet at the end!

Week away

Sorry I've been gone this week, but I've been in a wonderful place, seeing things like this:

And this:


And this:

And don't worry, plenty of treats too. I will be back next week with more pictures of my trip.

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.