sprinkles cupcakes

seeing as how much i adore cupcakes, i decided to scout out cupcake destinations in dallas...and came across sprinkles cupcakes from beverly hills.  score!!  this is the same company that sells its cupcake mixes at williams-sonoma, so i definitely took note and made sure to stop by there. 

internet, my dedication was rewarded more than i had imagined possible.

clockwise from top left: chocolate marshmallow (so-so), chocolate peppermint (festive), black and white (SOOOO GOOD), lemon coconut (SOOOO GOOD), red velvet (delish), and strawberry (so-so)

cute menu card on the flavours of the day, postcards, and a red velvet cupcake mix...everything looks like so much fun and so delicious!

bake fest 2008

Julie and I have been talking about baking goodies and packing them up as care packages for Christmas to send to our mutual friends.  The idea started in 2006 when we wanted to send cookies to Vartan, Dave, and Logan.  So finally this year we organized a baking date, and I procured all sorts of materials and ingredients and got prepped for a day of baking goodness.

The baking ingredients (partial).  Not in photo: pre-mixed shortbread and chocolate chip cookie dough, and brownie and gingerbread cookie ingredients, plus the cookie cutters and other fun decorating things.

My oven turned on at about 3:30 and went straight through to 9:30, and we made superbly delicious gingerbread cookies (that Julie and Alex kept on stealing when I wasn't looking), my favourite chocolate chip cookies (from the NYTimes article), and amazing chocolate brownies, and countless shortbread figures that Julie decorated with gusto.  She even made a Blair Waldorf with a pearl headband, come on...

We packaged up the cookies in tins, bags, and these amazing boxes I found at Michael's.  By the way, Michael's is awesome - there's soooo much going on in there for fun things you can do, and these boxes were just a cute little example.  I ended up spending a little over an hour in there just browsing when I went in...haha.

If you don't feel Christmas-y yet, I hope the cookies help you get there!!!

the first snowfall

i have to admit, it looks pretty exaggerated here.
blame the long(er) exposure.

someone wrote x-mas (with their shoes i guess)?
put a smile on my face.

ha, not so lounge-y now, are we...

i can't believe it's already here!!

so far it's been pretty tame (i.e. the snow hasn't reallllly coated the ground). perfect day to get some baking started though - i need to get some pictures out there for my holiday "business". today's cookies and this weekend i'm hoping to make more cupcake bites so that by next week i should have a pretty full portfolio of goodies to showcase.

things on my mind:

a) google party tomorrow night. it conflicts with the class i'm taking in the evenings and my class is only four sessions, so missing one is kind of a big deal. i'm still debating how i will approach the conflict because i love everything google (c'mon, who doesn't), and i already missed the yahoo! party last thursday due to class so i feel like i've been good enough to deserve a break.

b) i should go to class though. it's a beginner's cake decorating class and since i failed miserably at making roses last week, i should really go so i don't become the worst student in the class. i'm supposed to be good at this shizzie! i tried practising tonight but my royal icing is too runny to practice real piping, esp. flowers, and i don't have a strong enough blender to make real royal icing. bahhhh.

finally, a picture sample of my hard work tonight.