Cupcake Factory

I've been taking a cake decorating class lately, and I've been bringing the fruits of my labors to work the next day.  As a result, someone from work asked me to make the cupcakes for her daughter's baby shower.

First I made all the flowers

Then I baked and frosted all the cupcakes.

100 cupcakes, all boxed up and ready to go!

My house is a crime scene

Or that's how it has seemed lately.  We recently went through the massive undertaking of  removing the popcorn from our ceilings.  The crime scene reference is because of the tarps we've had taped everywhere to keep the mess down.

Matt, hard at work

And who knew that our white ceilings were not  so white.  Check out this dramatic before and after:

The process entailed moving all our furniture out, putting tarps down, scraping the old popcorn off, taping or removing the lights and vents, taping the walls, and re-painting the ceiling.

All our furniture, piled up in the living room

After that we decided we might as well install crown molding while we were dealing with the mess.  We bought ourselves a saw and borrowed a nail gun and Matt got to work.

Looks pretty good, don't you think? Thanks to Matt for all his hard work!

You know you're a Texan when...

So this weekend the weather has gotten unusually cool. Yesterday and today the temperature has been about 50 degrees and I've been FREEZING!  We even used our fireplace yesterday(for like the second time ever). Maybe it's a good thing we've said goodbye Utah, because I have lost any tolerance I had for the cold.

Thought I'd share another recipe I tried recently: Baked  pumpkin doughnuts!  They were DELICIOUS!

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 cups pumpkin purée (canned pumpkin)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice, or 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon plus heaping 1/4 teaspoon each ground nutmeg and ground ginger
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 3/4 cups + 2 tablespoons flour
• 
  

COATING

• 3 tablespoons cinnamon sugar

Directions

1) Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease two doughnut pans. If you don't have doughnut pans, you can bake these in a standard muffin tin; they just won't be doughnuts.

2) Beat together the oil, eggs, sugar, pumpkin, spices, salt, and baking powder until smooth.

3) Add the flour, stirring just until smooth.

4) Fill the wells of the doughnut pans about 3/4 full; use a scant 1/4 cup of batter in each well. If you're making muffins, fill each well about 3/4 full; the recipe makes about 15, so you'll need to bake in two batches (unless you have two muffin pans).

6) Bake the doughnuts for 15 to 18 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of one comes out clean. If you're making muffins, they'll need to bake for 23 to 25 minutes.

7) Remove the doughnuts from the oven, and after about 5 minutes, loosen their edges, and transfer them to a rack to cool.

8) While the doughnuts are still warm (but no longer fragile), gently shake them in a bag with the cinnamon-sugar. If you've made muffins, sprinkle their tops heavily with cinnamon-sugar.

9) Cool completely, and wrap airtight; store at room temperature for several days.

Yield: 12 doughnuts or 15 muffins. From: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2012/09/07/pumpkin-doughnuts-baked-to-perfection/