cupcakes!

I have been baking like crazy on my days off and yesterday was no exception! I made banana muffins for breakfast and had two cupcake recipes I wanted to make. The first cupcake was the hi hat which is a chocolate cupcake with marshmallow creme-like frosting dipped in chocolate. I have made these a few times but since Tyler doesn't really like chocolate I wanted to try an orange flavor. The cake was a yellow cupcake with a hint of orange flavor, with the marshmallow frosting dipped in orange flavored white chocolate. The verdict is still out as he got home from work late last night and went straight to bed. The white chocolate was much harder to work with so I resorted to bittersweet chocolate to speed up the process. The majority were dipped in the white chocolate so I think he will be happy!
This is what they look like before the chocolate bath!


and after!




The second recipe was for homemade hostess cupcakes. These are a big pain to make and my oven is so super hot the some of the bottoms were burned. The cake part is really good and easy to make. Its the filling and frosting that is time consuming and uses about 6 bowls so my dishwasher was full when I was finished.


The two have white icing because as I was cleaning off the table I discovered them off to the side on top on the lid of the container. I was over decorating at that point. I think next time I will stick to one recipe per day.

its the simple things

work has not been fun the past few weeks...

I am exhausted...

but the good news is...

I have the next 4 days off!!!!

I get to sleep in tomorrow!!!

I discovered hot chocolate with colored marshmallows!!! and the marshmallows are in their own packet so I can eat them!!!

The IGA in Frankfort sells bags of the marshmallows ( which are like the marshmallows in lucky charms, which I love)!!!

Maxx has finally calmed down and is sleeping (and not running around the house like a mad dog)!!!

and...

I have the best husband ever!!!

maxx!!

yesterday we got a puppy!

his name is maxx

he is the cutest thing ever!!

this is his favorite place to be,





with the exception of being outside

he protested when i tried to get him to come inside today

it was adorable!



oh, and he loves his big brother!

freezer jammin'

So I decided to make freezer jam a few days ago. I read the directions on the package and it seemed easy enough. I had also read a posting about freezer jam, so I was pretty confident that I could make it. I will revisit this posting in a minute. The recipe calls for 4 cups of crushed fruit, which was strawberries for the first round. The package also has a little chart off to the side that says you will need 4lbs of strawberries to make 4 cups. As I am starting on my 4th container of strawberries I'm thinking I have quite a bit of crushed strawberries in my bowl. I decided to measure what I had and got out my 4 cup measuring bowl and poured in the strawberries...and had to stop because I had way more than 4 cups! At this moment I recall the post I had read that said follow the directions exactly and you won't have any problems. Did I do that? Did I use only the 4 cups and find another use for the rest of the strawberries? No I did not. I poured the strawberries back in the bowl and proceeded to add the sugar and pectin. And guess what? I now have 7 jars of strawberry sauce. I guess that is not so terrible, but I was really looking forward to the jam. I did make a second batch with peaches, used ONLY 4 cups of fruit and it worked!