Odds and Ends from My First Year in Grad School

The Perfect Cupcake

So this is a long time coming! Devil's food cupcakes with mocha-almond-cinnamon buttercream for the prospective students' party in the spring:

Yes, this is the size of my stove/oven. My digs = mad tiny.

Mmm... crackly!

PERFECTION. BECAUSE I DEMAND IT.

Yes, it's a lot of frosting but... those swirly mounds are just too gorgeous for skimping.

These next ones were for my Food Anthropology class's last meeting. The vanilla bases had either rose buttercream or green/jasmine tea. The chocolate had raspberry or mocha-almond.

I ran out of cupcake liners, so I tried cutting out squares of parchment paper and jamming them into the cupcake pan cups. It actually worked out really well; they looked super classy. I may never go back to liners!



The buttercream was a little cloying because I didn't have time to make an Italian or Swiss base. That's right, this was straight-up American buttercream made with butter and powdered sugar, and stabilized with a tiny bit of shortening. Gech. 'Sokay, they were received well and I suppose that's the most important thing.

Like a delicious bouquet!!

And finally, I thought I'd throw in this random picture of some mushrooms I was cutting up for a soup because they were basically glowing on my chopping board. Delicious vegetables to balance out all that suga!!


Wuvs,
Azara