There's no place like home

If only traveling were as easy as clicking your cute red heels together three times... alas, it's not. My 3 year old daughter Violet and I flew to Michigan last week to visit my 82 year old grandmother. The flights on the way there went seamlessly, and I wore the smug face of the woman with the angel toddler that was delightful to travel with. Our stay was great (minus Vi being sick for 5 of the 7 days we were there) and we were sad to leave. Long story short, my daughter got sick while we were waiting to board or plane.. she had a coughing spell and ended up vomiting all over herself (and me) about 20 minutes before we were to get on our flight. We ran to the bathroom, did a quick hobo bath and ran on to find our seats. Needless to say, the passengers around us were none to happy to be sitting near Barfy McBarfpants and her stinky pukey mother. But what can you do? Just gotta cry in the airport bathroom roll with the punches.  Now if that wasn't an appetizing story I know something that might do the trick:

 Gluten-free coffee cupcakes with Nutella buttercream and homemade (the crust too folks!) apple pie for my Dad's 54th birthday party! Enjoy :)

PS: Between moving, Halloween and packing for our trip, I was too lazy busy to make my Nightmare Before Christmas cupcakes... but Violet loves that film so I will make them another time!

This is Halloween!

♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ Boys and girls of every age
Wouldn't you like to see something strange?
Come with us and you will see
This, our town of Halloween ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪


Halloween is by far my FAVORITE holiday. Making costumes, trick or treating, eating my  daughter's candy the cool crisp air... and all of the really creepy little treats there are to make. We've been moving all week so I'm a bit behind on the confectionery front, but this year I'm going to make "Nightmare Before Christmas" cupcakes! 


These little beauties are my inspiration, although I don't use fondant so mine won't look as inedible perfect:

If that last comment seemed snarky... it was! To be honest, I've been wanting to learn how to use fondant for quite some time now, and it's on my to-do list!  Happy haunting, boys and ghouls! 

Pumpkins Are Magical

Guess who's back? I am! I know, I know... it's been over a year since my last post. The blogging gods are shaking their heads at me. I never said I was on top of this blogging business :)  But here I am, giving it another go.  I was eating batter baking cupcakes the other day for a fall festival and thought I'd come back and reinvent my blog... and I must say that I'm really happy that I did! So here are the life changing pumpkin pie cupcakes that brought me back to you:

Aren't they frickin' pretty?!?!  Yep. I'm pretty arrogant modest when it comes to my baking. So... here's to many more semi-regular posts from your local (or not so) baker!