Monday, August 27, 2007

Birthdays are for Baking

I'm starting this blog with entries about what led up to me wanting to keep it. This post is backdated to approximately the date it happened.

My little brother just discovered rock 'n' roll turned sixteen. He's been drooling over VCTOTW's Cookies 'n' Cream and S'mores cupcake recipes since I bought the book, so I decided to treat him for his birthday. I went with the S'mores, which surprised me because given a choice, I always pick the more chocolaty option.



I stuck to the book's recipe, but used half all-purpose and half whole wheat flour. Then I frosted them with a spoon because I still hadn't replaced my burst pastry bag, stuck an eighth of a graham cracker on each one and used a vegetable peeler to put some semi-sweet chocolate shavings on top for that little bit of extra birthday fancy.

Everyone is so used to standard chocolate or vanilla cupcakes with the difference being in the filling or topping that my family and brother's friends were pleasantly surprised by the graham taste of the cupcakes themselves. And they all agreed my decorating skills had improved since my first try, despite the fact that I was back to working with a spoon. The best part was now that I was finally getting the hang of the baking thing (and I was only doing one batch, not six), everyone still thought it took me ages to make the cupcakes, but it didn't take much time at all.