Add Chocolate and We Have a Turtle: Cashew Caramel Cookies

(Technically the title is wrong.  You need pecans for a turtle.  The Melting Poop has invaded my brain!)

There has been a lot of change in my life.  I went from cupcakes to cookies.
I quit the job that I felt crazy comfortable in.
I took a new job that will have me working at two restaurants in a new city.
I still work at the job that I've been complaining about since I got it, but I now feel more comfortable being at.
I have been too lazy to not end my sentences with prepositions.

But I made a new cookie.  My sister said, "THEY WERE TOO SWEET."  My brother-in-law ate four.  They were gone quite quickly on my last "Baked Goods Saturday" at Melting Poop.

I do hope that people in Saratoga enjoy sweets as much as they did at Melting Poop!

A Reasonable and Scary Fear Evasion: Cream-Filled Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

To whom it may concern;

I’m afraid that if I do something too much I will dislike it.  I don’t believe that I’ll ever stop loving pizza.  I don’t think that I’ll ever hate French fries.  But cupcakes?! I don’t want to lose my love for them.  So I took a break.  And I believe I will continue to take a break for a while from cupcakes.  So this week? COOKIES COOKIES COOKIES COOKIES COOKIES COOKIES COOKIES!

I’m so very picky about cookies.  I don’t like nuts in my sweets.  I don’t like having to drink something with my dessert.  I don’t like too much.  And I certainly need a good texture for it.  These cookies were wonderful for me.  AND! I tend to burn chocolate creations (because you can’t tell if they’re burnt or not… they’re ALREADY brown!), BUT I DIDN’T BURN THEM!

I did get a little bit antsy to eat them, so I ate some strawberries with the cream filling.  Don’t hate.  Delish. 

A few problems arose: I made the cookies too big and I made them too close together.  They were supposed to yield about 30, but I only made 22?  Whatevs.  The ugly ones got eaten by my co-workers and they didn’t seem to mind.  My beautiful picture is perfect cookies made without smooshing. 

They stack nicely. 

Sincerely,
I won’t ever get tired of sweets

(But these are terribly filling.)

A Summer Spent Smug: Tres Leches Cupcakes

Cinco de Mayo may be one of my favorite holidays.  It included quesadillas, nachos, tequila, Alayna, and Hannah.  I spent the “weekend” in New Hampshire with one of my best friends.  Therefore, I missed my Latin American cupcakes by a week.  I made tres leches cupcakes this weekend, reminding me of the summer I spent doing nothing by a pool.  Oh, how I miss the times of doing nothing. 

Tres leches means three milks.  The three milks involved are evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, and “milk” (which in this case was heavy  cream).  I made the cakes veeeewey cawrefullwy.  Then I poked holes in them real quick like.  And then poured the mixture of milks on them.  I made a really boring whipped cream to put on top and sprinkled them with cinnamon.  They turned out delicious and reminiscent of lazy days spent reading Roald Dahl. 

These tastes and scents and memories make me think of when I thought I had the whole world figured out.  Who knows who they want to be with when they grow up?  I still don’t know what I want to do.  I don’t know who I want to be, or be with, or what I want to spend the rest of my life doing.  I am very lost now and the cupcakes make me laugh thinking about how I thought I knew everything just a year ago. 

Minions Assemble!: Goodbye Cupcakes for Kayla

Sometimes, it’s not about what it’s made with except if it’s made with love. 

A good friend of everyone at my restaurant left recently.  I wanted to tell her how much everyone loved her.  I wanted her to know she is beautiful, inside and out.  She deserves love that is wholesome and overwhelming and all-encompassing.  She deserves someone who is attractive and funny and nice.  She deserves a prince charming.  She doesn’t know she deserves all this.  She barely realizes how wonderful she makes the world by being in it. 

For Easter, she got Despicable Me.  She frequently said, “WHAAAAAAAAAAAT???” at work.  She made me laugh with it.  So, I figured a way to show her how much we all loved her was to make some minions tell her…

MINIONS! ASSEMBLE!

It was a process.  It took some Twinkies, some extras, lots of patience, chocolate sprinkles, black frosting, white frosting, and cupcakes.  It also took some twisting of arms to get people to write down what they enthusiastically took.  But it all got done on time.  It was finished and she cried and I think she understands a fraction of the way people felt about her.  Because we all love her and her silliness more than she’ll ever know.  I’ll miss the friendship we weren’t allowed to have because of strange factors and moving to a different state. 

On the back of each speech bubble, people wrote special messages to her.  Our kitchen manager taped a brownie to it because she used to eat them all the time.  The restaurant hasn’t been the same since she left and it keeps changing.  Her move kind of got me thinking that I need to make a change, too.  The minions in my own head are growing restless and bored.  We’ll see where my minions take me.  

Back to Creating: German Chocolate Cupcakes

I’ve been quite busy, in case you didn’t notice.  And the last update was about how burnt out I’ve been feeling.   So I’ve been looking for new things to do, ways to help change the world.  I am pushing uphill to try to feel more and feed people less.  But cupcakes are still a way that I’ve been feeding people. 

Living near a real German woman has made me question things.  Like how to say streusel.  She started yelling at me in German on Easter because I said it a certain way.  I still haven’t found out what she was shouting at me.  I also question why these are called German Chocolate cupcakes.  But I made them.

The batter was tasty, but I don’t really like coconuts.  Or pecans.  But I toasted the pecans myself.  And I made the Coconut-Pecan frosting.  They were well-recieved.  Some people, smart people, actually knew what they were.  Otherwise I was left mumbling things about Germans and chocolate and coconut and nut allergies. 

Perhaps I could have cut a little neater, dried the frosting a bit more, strategically places the pecans to show the beauty of the frosting, but I figured they were meant to be eaten.  And my sister agreed, even if she doesn’t like coconut either.  (Could it be genetic?)

I made some more streusel cupcakes on Easter.  I played with puppies.  I played with twin babies.  And I made some pretty delicious food in the past few weeks.  I think I might be switching to cookies when I feel burnt out again.  I might be able to handle that.  We’ll see.  This week, I’ll be watching All American Rejects instead of baking.  Woo! Eighth grade all over again!  (Meet Rosie! :)) 

Don't Judge, Sweet Nostalgia: Betty Crocker's Boxed Cupcakes

I have been feeling burnt out.  I have been feeling tired and sore and sick of work.  I long for the days when I had no worries.  When the money I made went straight into my savings instead of into my checking to be used.  When the only caffeine I drank were the cold, sweet sips from the bottom of my mother’s tea.  When I used to walk around outside at 7AM in my Aladdin nightgown during the summer to find my father.  When the only fighting was the bickering between me and my sister (which I’m glad has since subsided, but it was nice when that was the only kind of fighting). 

When did I learn what passive aggression was?  When did work become something I needed to do instead of what I wanted to do?  When did my big toes become so calloused that I can’t feel them?  When did the weeks start to blend together to the point that three months have passed without me noticing? 

I went back to my old favorites.  I wanted something I loved.   I wanted to sleep.  I wanted easy.   So I bought some fruit, sushi, and boxed cupcakes (the best kind).  I bought canned frosting.  I wanted my childhood.  I wanted my fairy tale.  Fairy tales exist, even if only in my memory.

They were topped with rainbow sprinkles, because who doesn’t remember rainbow sprinkles in their childhood?  They were topped with Betty Crocker chocolate frosting.  They were nostalgia.  It was wonderful.  I ate three.  I took days off.  I will recover, just slowly.  I miss my friends.  

It Did Not Catch Fire: Pineapple Amaretto Cupcakes

The choice was not mine.  Like many things in life, I could not find something that interested me this week, so I let someone else choose.  I also made them on Sunday instead of Saturday.  The chosen cupcake included liquor I don’t care for, with many kinds of almonds, and pineapple.  The gentleman chooser has since decided that he is most definitely allergic to almonds. 

It was a fun new thing to try though. Although, if I could go back and do things over, I’d make sure my amaretto could flambé and the pineapple was ready before I warmed up the sugar.  You live, you learn.  I did get to try the amaretto my aunt made me for Christmas once though. 

They were topped with really plain whipped cream, so we added a little vanilla and some sugar.  Had I not been afraid that he was allergic to almonds, I probably would have halved the vanilla and added a little bit of almond extract, but anaphylactic shock is scary to me. 

They look pretty.  Not as pretty as Martha’s, but I can handle this.  I also ran out of time.  So many problems.  But they were nice to look at.