Baking Obsession

I'm going on a baking spree.  I don't know why, I think it's because it's Lent and I'm not allowed to eat sweets so I'm overcompensating by making lots of sweets for other people.  Or maybe it's because I won this little guy the other day for the office bake-off. 

Or maybe I'm just in a rough spot right now and need to bake.  Baking is my stress reliever, I feel so happy and calm and centered when I'm in the kitchen baking.  Now I'd feel even calmer and more centered if I was the ONLY one in the kitchen and could just zone out, but that doesn't happen normally. 

Or maybe it's because I saw this book at Christmas for Small One since she brings in cupcakes for her friends birthdays (and when you see that, don't think that she's amazing.  I normally make everything she sends in and all her friends bring in cupcakes for the birthday person.  I feel really bad when she comes home with all these droopy, sloppy boxed cake and frosting cupcakes on her birthday because I know people spent time and money on them, but seriously I'm NOT wasting calories on some unworthy baked good just because I feel bad!) but I didn't end up getting it and saw it in the library the other day and got really inspired to make cupcakes. 
 

Or maybe it's because the cupcakes that I made from the book turned out deliciously but the frosting was rock hard and weird. 

I took that as a challenge.  I WILL find a new recipe for cupcakes and frosting and it WILL be delicious and it WILL look professional!  Or maybe not.  I'm gonna give cupcakes one more chance then just stick to cookies. For some reason I can do cookies.  I don't know why but I've figured out how to bake cookies and somehow my frosting just clicks.  One would think that making a frosting swirl on top of a cupcake would be a lot easier than piping a santa face on a cookie but for me it isn't.  

Those were some of my favorite cookies to date :)

But after some extensive cupcake research on the internet I ran across an interesting recipe.  I'll admit, I like a denser cupcake.  Something more like a cake.  Not those light, airy, insubstantial (yet calorie and chemical packed) out of the box cupcakes.  And before you get all mad at me for saying that boxed cake mix has chemicals in it (I bet you can't pronounce all the ingredients either!) I have to confess that in college I ate boxed cake mix.  Plain.  Normally in the middle of the night.  With multiple hours left to go on projects.  And it was DELICIOUS.  But it's bad for me sooooo yeah. 

Anyway, this cupcake recipe that I looked up promised to be a bit denser.  It was showcased on the Martha Stewart show called Billy's Vanilla Vanilla cupcakes.  The interesting thing about these cupcakes was that instead of creaming the butter and sugar together and then adding the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients, you instead mix all the dry ingredients plus the sugar together and THEN you cut in the butter like you were making biscuits.  But you're not making biscuits so then you add the wet ingredients and it turns into cake batter and voila!  A cupcake! 

They were pretty tasty right out of the oven.  They were a little dry today when I could finally have sweets and try them out so I don't know if the recipe's a keeper or not, but I'll have to make them again to see.  The recipe made a lot of cupcakes though.  As in 41 cupcakes!  So I frosted half of them and saved the rest to experiment with making cake balls.  We'll see how those turn out when I can find lollipop sticks. 

So yes, those were my baking travails of this past week.  Now it's on to more cookie baking and planning for Fake Patty's Day!