Chocolate Winner

There were lots of great dessert ideas from those of you that commented last week! I want to make everything that was mentioned!! There were more things involving chocolate than anything else… so I made chocolate cupcakes.

{Robin, the cupcakes you mentioned made me go buy the latest issue of Cooks Illustrated. I’ve really got to get a subscription to that! Y’all got us hooked on them with the cookbook you gave us for our wedding!}

Brad said the cupcakes were a hit. At least he came home empty-handed, which is always a good thing when I send baked goods.

One time when I was in college, I experimented with making an Orange Cake. The recipe sounded good. But the results were far from that, in my opinion. My friends didn’t much care for it, either. So I took it to the park, to feed the ducks. Ducks like bread, and they eat gross things like bugs, so I figured they would gobble this cake up. They all flocked to me when they saw I had food for them. But with one taste of the cake, they turned tail and left it for the ants. I’m pretty sure that when I came back the next day, the ants had rejected it, too, and just left it to the forces of nature.

Since I’m deeply wounded from that incident, I really like it when people eat all of my baked goods. It’s like a healing salve. Or something.

So anyway, here’s a picture of the cupcakes:

Sweet Decisions

It’s been a while since I’ve done any creative baking. I’ve made some cookies. And a few regular cakes. Nothing is wrong with that, by any means. But I’m in the mood for a creative baking episode. (Well, I guess I made that Empty Tomb Cake recently. But that doesn’t count. I don’t know why, but it just doesn’t.)

Lucky me, Brad has some kind of “Science People” event coming up on Friday evening. The perfect time for me to try something new! So I’m looking for inspiration.

This morning I called my Dad, looking for inspiration. You have to know my Dad… he loves Carrot Cake. (I do, too, but I’m just not as much in the mood for making that.) BUT HE LOVES CARROT CAKE. So I had to plan my conversation before I called.

I asked him, “Dad, if you had to choose some kind of cake besides Carrot Cake, what would you choose?” His response: “There is no other woman besides your Mother, and there is no other cake besides Carrot Cake… I know you’re looking for a gap in my armor, but it’s not there… You shouldn’t even talk of  such things as making a different kind of cake.”

So I tried from a different angle. “Dad, if you were stranded on a desert island, and the only kind of food available was cake, but the ingredients for Carrot Cake weren’t there, which kind of cake would you choose?” His response: “I’d strap all the coconuts together to make a raft, and put out to sea. There’s no reason in trying to live without Carrot Cake.”

Since I couldn’t get anywhere with him, I’m hoping to get some inspiration from the few of you that read my blog. If you usually read, but don’t usually comment, let this be the time you comment! What should I do? Specialty cookies? Unique cupcakes? A fancy cake? And what flavors? I’m looking for your opinions! :)