Filed under: 52 Weeks of Cupcakes
I actually made these last week, but then I never really got the opportunity to blog them. I was going to visit the boyfriend at work, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to start my “52 Weeks of Cupcakes” project. And they were soooo easy. I totally used a cake mix from a box.
Recipe:
Cupcakes
1 box Duncan Hines Devil’s Food Cake mix
3 eggs
vegetable oil
water
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and fill your cupcake pan with paper liners.
2. Follow the directions on the box to make the batter. It’s simple. Throw all the ingredients into a mixing bowl, grab your handy electric mixer, and mix everything together for a good two minutes or so.
3. Fill the cupcake liners to a little over 2/3 full. I like it when my cupcakes rise over the top of the liners a little, but you don’t want them spilling all over the place, either.
4. Bake them for about 20 minutes. Use a toothpick or a fork to judge when they’re done… just stick it in the middle of one of your little cupcakes and if it comes out clean? They’re ready. Take ‘em out.
5. Repeat. You should get about 24 cupcakes out of this, or just under if you like filling them up a bit more like I do.
6. Let your cupcakes cool on a wire rack. While you’re waiting for them to cool, you can start making the cookies ‘n cream frosting!
Before you start making the frosting, you’re going to need your Oreo crumble. Take about 4-6 Oreos out of the bag and stick them in a freezer bag. Make sure it’s closed tight! Now think about whatever is stressing you out, and take a hammer to them until you have a bag full of tiny little Oreo crumbs. Therapeutic, yes? Move on to the buttercream bit now.
Cookies ‘n Cream Frosting
1 cup unsalted butter (at room temperature – its much easier to work with)
6 – 8 cups confectioner’s sugar
1/2 milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
crumbled Oreos
1. Put your cup of butter in a mixing bowl and get out the beaters again. Cream the butter until it’s nice and smooth.
2. Add the milk, vanilla, and icing sugar. Be gradual with the icing sugar… do about 4 cups, mix it all up. Add another cup, mix it. Keep adding icing sugar until you have the consistency that you need.
3. Snip a little hole in the Oreo crumb bag and shake away. Re-mix. Repeat until you are satisfied with the amount of Oreo crumble in your frosting, but make sure you save a little!
OK. Your cupcakes are probably cooled off now. So frost away! When they’re all ready, take your package of un-crumbled Oreo cookies and break a cookie in half. You now have a topper for two cupcakes! Smoosh them into the frosting and repeat until every cupcake has a cookie half on top. And now, the final step: Take the leftover cookie crumble and shake it on to the tops of the cupcakes. Just a little sprinkle on each one – you don’t need too much, but it makes the frosting look a little nicer than when the crumbles are all inside.
Et voila! You’re done! And it was quick and painless!
I delivered these pretty little cupcakes to the boyfriend’s work, and within minutes of my arrival, four of them had been eaten – one by him, three by co-workers. At the end of the night, he told me that he’d given another one away and it had been described as such: “This cupcake is so fluffy it’s like eating a cloud!” If that’s not motivation to bake more cupcakes, I don’t know what is!
Today’s project? Strawberry cupcakes. Stay tuned, I’ll let you know how it worked out.
xoxo
The Cupcake Bombshell
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: cupcake, cupcake bombshell, goals, the blog
Well, the end of the hiatus is here. I decided what I wanted to use this blog for, now that I have an “official” blog over at Amanda-M.com, and the answer is:
Cupcakes.
Starting today, my goal is to make a batch of cupcakes every single week for the next year. I’ll post pictures and recipes every week, and perhaps I should also update you weekly on my waist size… just kidding. I foresee giving most of the cupcakes away. So it’ll be my boyfriend’s waist size that I’ll have to record. *wink*
Watch for other posts of all things cupcake-related… shoppe listings, cupcake gear, awesome cupcake art, and so forth. Please feel free to send me suggestions and submissions: cupcakebombshell@gmail.com.
xoxo
The Cupcake Bombshell
Cupcake Bombshell – The Blog is being put on hold. I may have usage for it later. I have too many accounts online, and I’m neglecting them all by updating in a million different places.
As of now, all my bloggy goodness shall appear at:
www.amanda-m.com
See ya ’round the Interwebz.
Filed under: Pre-Cupcake Blog | Tags: destined for more, epic, fame, notoriety, old, pre-cupcake, un-average
Sometimes I feel that maybe I am destined for more. Does that sound greedy?
Seriously, though, there’s nothing fundamentally “wrong” with my life as it currently is. I’m not homeless, I work as a freelancer which is a goal I’ve been attempting to achieve since 2000, I’m in relatively good health – knock on wood! – and I could really be doing a lot worse. But I don’t feel like I’m doing great, and that’s bothering me.
More specifically, I feel like I should be living some sort of un-average lifestyle. I don’t have any delusions of grandeur, but I don’t necessarily feel “ordinary”, either. I didn’t ever picture myself as the “work Monday to Friday-get married-have children-buy a small house in the suburbs-throw dinner parties-grow older-retire” person, but it seems that I am on a path very similar to that one.
I feel that I need to amp things up a notch and create a path for myself that will allow me to attend techie events, rub shoulders with celebrities (i.e. Richard Branson, not Ashton Kutcher), travel around the continent frequently, perhaps achieve some sort of Internet notoriety, etc. And easily pay the bills. That part is important, because right now, “easily” is definitely the wrong word.
“Get excited and do epic shit.” Words to live by.
Filed under: Pre-Cupcake Blog | Tags: clients, finances, money, moving, old, pre-cupcake, stress, stripping
Hey readers. And by readers, I mean reader, because according to my dashboard analytics, there’s like one person a day checking this.
I am hurting for business. I need clients in a big way. I’ve been handing out my business card to everyone I meet (seriously… the other night I gave my card to a taxi driver!), I redesigned my company website, I apply for every project I find online that I’m capable of… Where is all the work? I’m currently without a single client, which means without an income, and that? That’s stressful with a capital S.
In other news, I found a beautiful house to move into, and got approved for it. The problem is that I do not currently have first & last at my disposal. It’s unfortunate, because I’m going to lose the house. It’s a great size, cherry hardwood floors throughout, all utilities included, brand new shiny black appliances in the kitchen, fenced in front AND back yards, landlord will pay for my paint and do all the lawn-mowing / snow-shovelling for me… It’s amazing. It would cost me $700 a month – all inclusive, including cable and wireless internet. I wants it. I have nobody that I can turn to for a loan, either. I already have a line of credit that’s maxed and they won’t increase it, my parents are currently tapped, and my friends are just as broke as I am. Plus, who wants to give a loan to a business owner without a single damn client??
I have a friend that I can generally turn to for financial / business / life advice, as he’s pretty damn wise and tends to see the big picture and think of solutions that I do not think of on my own, but apparently we’re in a spat at the moment? It’s shitty because to be honest, I don’t even really understand why, but I tried opening the lines of communication and nothing happened. The proverbial ball is no longer in my court. I guess I just have to play the waiting game now.
In other news, I’m starting to wonder if there’s something fundamentally “stripper-esque” about me. In the last few months, I have had four neighbourhood acquaintances ask me if I’d turned to exotic dancing, which – for the record – I have not. I also had a close personal friend try to convince me to go work with her, as… guess. Yep, a stripper. THEN, after about a month of silence on the stripping-front, I ran into a friend on the bus and we got to talking about my lack of clientele. “Why don’t you try exotic dancing?” she suggested, “I would do it if I had your figure. A lot of professional women are doing it now to make ends meet.” What the hell? I am a slim, redheaded, slightly tattooed almost-girl-next-door. Does that automatically make me a prime candidate for dancing naked in front of grunting men? I’d kind of prefer to stick with freelance design and even writing gigs, thanks.
If my one reader out there in WordPress land has any advice on coming up with $1400 CDN in an extraordinarily short amount of time WITHOUT TAKING MY CLOTHING OFF, please – comment on this blog. I could use the advice until my wise friend re-enters my life.
xoxo
The Cupcake Bombshell
I’ve mentioned before that I have this love/hate relationship with sleep, where sometimes I am impossible to sleep and sometimes sleep and I enter into a love affair with one another.
But this time, I think something is physically wrong with me. It’s been going on for weeks now… I can’t stop sleeping. And during the days, I am not doing anything overly strenuous or exhausting, so there’s not much in the way of an explanation for my constant fatigue. Today, for example, after sleeping about 7 hours, I woke up at 8:30 am. Nothing wrong with that, right? But then at 9:30, I slept for another hour. And then I woke up again, only to take another hour-long nap at noon. And then I fell asleep, again, around 5 pm and slept until 7:30 pm. That doesn’t seem normal.
My sometimes-roommate has partnered my chronic need for sleep with my excessively easy bruising and convinced me that I have leukemia, and now I’m freaking out. Someone reassure me that my iron is just low or something, okay? Ready? Go.
Filed under: Pre-Cupcake Blog | Tags: clients, design, old, pre-cupcake, time
My house is messy in a big way and needs to be cleaned.
I feel like drawing.
I have to finish start coding a PHP website for Client A which is due Friday. I have to design a splash page for Client B, make a Flash animation for Client C, and finish Client D’s webpage.
I’m hungry.
My own portfolio site needs redesigning.
The days need to be a lot longer, please.
Filed under: Pre-Cupcake Blog | Tags: lazy bitch, my booky wook, old, pre-cupcake, wtf blanket
I am feeling ridiculously lazy today. I blame the weather… all day it has been overcast and cold and rainy, and I find it hard to get up and get motivated when there is no sunshine to be found anywhere. Right now, it’s snowing and that makes me even crankier than the rain did. Snow? Really? We went from 14 degrees Celsius to snow? Damn you, Canada.
My laziness could also have something to do with the insanity of my weekend. Friday night I threw my first ever surprise party (which went off without a hitch, I might add!) and was up until the wee hours of the morning. Saturday I had some friends over for a board game night and somehow it ended up lasting until almost 4 am. Last night I was on a college radio show with one of my friends and didn’t get home until close to 2. That’s too much excitement for one weekend. I fear I am getting too old for all this.
My apartment is in shambles from all the weekend company, which is unfortunate because I despise cleaning and yet I’d been doing so good for two weeks. Now it looks like I was visited by the Tasmanian Devil and then when he left there was an earthquake directly under my floors. On top of that, I have client work to take care of, I need to make a trip to the post office, I’d like to redesign my website, I’m trying to get a business plan written up, and I seriously need a shower. It’s 5 pm and all I really want to do is hop into my WTF Blanket and read My Booky Wook until I fall asleep.
I am a computer nerd in a big way. Shiny new internet websites attract my attention, especially if there is any degree of interactivity involved. Social networking, blogging, and microblogging sites attract me like a fly to honey.
I am starting to lose track of all of the websites I’ve signed up for over time. Some exceptional programmer out there needs to create a Mac app that contains a list of all the sites I am on, retains account and password information, and allows me to update any – ANY – of them from my desktop, with the ability to crosspost with simple checkbox selection. I’m convinced that it will improve my quality of life, along with my time management and organizational skills. OK, maybe not but it would definitely be convenient.
WordPress, Twitter, YouTube, Humble Voice, Facebook, Tumblr, eBay, MySpace, more, more, more… I am like the Where’s Waldo of the internet. Where will I pop up next?
