Mevrouw Cupcake

 

For this month's installment of Cookie Carnival, hosted by Kate of The Clean Plate Club, we were given the opportunity to vote on which cookie we'd like to bake. Hard choices had to be made with three equally tasty, but very different cookies on the menu. What to bake? Snickerdoodles? Coconut Macaroons? Double Chocolate cookies? As it turned out the majority of the 40-bakers strong group, including yours truly, voted for Snickerdoodles.

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Last week E, in comment to my mild frustration at trying organizing my busy social calendar around yet another baking project, said to me "well, you don't have to bake all the time."  While it is true that I'm not always in the mood to bake or feel that I'm really just squeezing it in, most often just preparing my mise en place is all it takes to swing my mood back into baking mode. For me it is less about choice and more about this undeniable desire to create beautiful morsels with butter, sugar, flour and eggs.  Even when things go horribly wrong, even when I lie awake tossing and turning at night worrying how the final product will turn out, even when I make something that I know isn't particularly my taste, just because I want to experience making the recipe, I still love every second of the creative process that is baking.

When Lucy tagged me back in April for six words meme it didn't take long to come up with the six words I'd use to describe myself, but it has taken a while to share them, but here they are...

At my best...

in the kitchen.

(Claudia, Karen, Rebekka, Joy, & Kim consider yourself tagged)

In my heart of hearts there is no place I feel more at home then in my lovely kitchen, and although professional training is not in the cards at the moment, there is no reason that I can't make the most of my amateur talents and thirst for knowledge. For these very reasons, I have finally mustered up the courage to join the Daring Bakers, who I've been watching wistfully from afar since their humble beginnings in November of 2006.

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To say that I love vanilla is a bit of an understatement, but I really, really, really do love vanilla. I use it in everything from baked goods to vinaigrettes, I've feasted on grilled lobster served with vanilla oil, drank cocktails mixed with homemade vanilla vodka, and even worn vanilla oil as perfume. My love for vanilla was most certainly influenced by my mother, who always used pure Mexican vanilla extract and whole vanilla beans when I was growing up. Once accustomed to the complexity in flavor and aroma of real vanilla, artificial vanilla flavoring just won't do.

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Well, there it is ladies and gentlemen.  I'd love to go into a big story about this beauty, but the truth is, I'm sick as a dog. Tomorrow this rich and decadent peanut butter torte (as chosen by Elizabeth of Ugg Smell Food) will be served up as a treat for E's colleagues, but for now, I'm just happy to have posted and be on my way to the bath.

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This month the theme "ingredient" for Cupcake Hero is Earth Day, as chosen by Tempered Woman, partner in crime to Cupcake Hero's founder and hostess-with-the-mostess, Laurie of quirky cupcake. With such a broad and interesting topic to portray using the cupcake as my medium, let me tell you, I found it difficult to come up with an idea. I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it some more, and when I couldn't come up with anything, I decided I'd better pick the brains of my nearest and dearest. So a big shout-out to my darling friend Liz who suggested using flower pots as baking cups and to my lovely boyfriend who came up with idea of a farming theme, after their input everything else just fell into place. In my case, the egg came before the chicken, in that it was only after thinking about the subject of Earth Day and farming, that I started thinking about sustainable agriculture and locally grown foods and how my opionions on the subject were shaped by my parents. In honor of Earth Day and my wonderful parents, I present to you my organic farm cupcakes in a reusable baking cups!

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