I rarely make cake from scratch; like brownies, the box mix for cake is usually just as good as, or better than, the results of slaving over the stove and measuring ingredients.  Purest bakers will disagree. They can bite me.

Still, I was feeling adventurous when I made some vanilla cupcakes from scratch for the Cupcakes for Charity event, and they were a success! I was going to try a new recipe for frosting, too, but I ended up making my tried and true Damn Frosting. It was an excellent combo. Anna, one of the fabulous event organizers, demanded the recipe for my cupcakes, so lady, this one’s for you.

I’m 90% sure I dug up this recipe up from the bowels of 52cupcakes and promptly lost again forever. It’s specifically a cupcake recipe, and I have no idea if that makes a difference in full sized cakes. If you try it for a sheet or round cake, let me know how it goes.

Vanilla Cupcakes

3 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking posder
3/4 tsp. salt
1 12 sticks unsalted, room temp. butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
1 1/4 cups milk

Heat your oven to 350* F. Cream together the butter and sugar until it’s fluffy (about 4 minutes). Meanwhile, in medium bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the eggs to the batter one at a time. Beat in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture and milk alternatively, beginning and ending with the flour. Bake on the center rack of the oven for 20 minutes, and cool the cupcakes on a wire rack.

Happy baking.

On Thursday I’m going to be at the Roger Smith Hotel for a Cupcakes4Charity event raising money for cancer research. I’m one of the people baking for the event, and my cupcakes will be up for sale, with all the proceeds going to charity. That’s ACTUAL cupcakes, people, not “my Cupcakes”.* You couldn’t afford those.

I’m torn between making plain Jane vanilla cupcakes or Jen’s infamous chocolate peanut butter-and-crack creations. I might do both if I’m feeling ambitious. I’m also adding “host a bake sale for charity” to my life list, because I’m betting I could rock the shit out of one. For now, though, I bake.

If you’re in NYC will you please come out and support? The cupcakes are $2, but if you wear yellow (even just yellow socks) they’re $1. You can afford that.

*not to be confused with my milkshake.

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photo credit:

“Total eye candy.”
Bake it Pretty has a fantastic assortment of cupcake papers, vintage toppers and birthday candles, and a huge variety of sprinkles, sugars and “jimmies”.  I’m really like the photography, too. It’s professional looking and I can imagine that all of the tiny-scale photo shoots were a really fun time. It makes the store fun to browse.  The best part about this online shop, though, is the prices.  I’ve been noticing a lot of these specialty baking stores popping up around the interwebs (the designer cupcake papers are getting huge!) and decided to do some comparison shopping.  Trust me, if you want something special, buy it here.

This quirky cake topper was my favorite cake out of the bunch, so I bought it.  I’m excited to have it peddling around the top of my birthday cake!  Woo hoo!

Visit her on etsy or at bakeitpretty.com

{p.s. If you call after you’ve placed your order in a bit of a panic because you’re spacey and forgot to change your address with PayPal, so your package is going to be sent to the WRONG address, she’s REALLY nice about changing it for you. Ahem.}

This month MAC is launching a new product line called the Sugar Sweet collection, and this photo from their ad campaign is just so perfect.  I haven’t bought new fun makeup since 2007 when Carissa convinced me to buy “sumptious olive” eye shadow for my wedding. I might be overdue.

Shortly after Halloween, Rob and I were in Target. We swung by the clearance section to see if there was anything worth scooping up, and boy oh man, was there ever. I scored eleven boxes of Halloween funfetti cake mix for 40 cents a box. Coolness upon cool, the sprinkles, or “funfetti”, are packaged in their own little foil container, and the main package is plain white cake mix, so if you’re making cupcakes for something other than Halloween, you can have plain.

I used that mix and some vanilla frosting to make Jen’s birthday cupcakes. Since the cupcakes I made for her birthday last year were so chocolaty and rich, I made these light, airy and sweet. The bears are Teddy Grams from 100-Calorie packages. Normal Teddy Grams are bigger and thicker, and would work well on a cake, but these are tiny and cute, about 3/4 of an inch tall, and just right for posing on cupcakes.

The hearts are purple Necco conversation hearts stuck on backwards. Grandma and I ripped open a bunch of little boxes and picked out all of the purple ones. I made the sign earlier in the day out of a cut-out square of poster board, with a strand of uncooked spaghetti taped to the back of it for the stick. Silver candles completed the look.

So fun!

I had been working on a marketing project for a while, but it was all back end stuff. When the time came to actually contact people, I had to figure out what email address to use. My personal one is personal. My blog one would be pretty inappropriate (I use the “eff werd” too much). And anyway, who wants to work with some girl who is emailing out of blue? So I started a company.

If you click on the picture you can see the site.

The copy isn’t exactly the way I want it, because I wrote it rather quickly. Najla, copywriter extraordinaire, is working on that for me.

I call it Pink Moose because I really, really like the word “Moose” (MOOOOOOOSE!) and I figured the logo would be great. Pink can be saccharine, but when it’s a pink moose, it’s less Pretty Pretty Princess and more whimsical and funny and not too serious.

I’m not sure if this is the permanent logo, but it’s what Rob came up with in a pinch, and it’ll do. I’m NOT paying someone to design a logo, and my attempts at drawing a moose have left me regretting skipping most of the second semester of my illustration class in college. (I got a B anyway, a fact that my then-boyfriend found deplorable, because I was literally never there.)

I’ve done marketing like this for another company. I enjoyed it (even though the pay was poo) because I learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t, and I also got an abundance of tiny secrets on “going the extra mile”. For instance, she insisted that any paperclip that was not red (to match her logo) was to be banished from the office! Sounds weird, but made all of our outgoing, paper-clipped packages look SO special. All of my paperclips are going to be pink! I also learned a lot of what I would do if the firm was MINE: things like handwritten labels (we HAD to have typed in her office, and I always wanted to hand write them) and recycled material packaging and paper.

I’m pretty excited, although I’m overwhelmed because my home office is not up to par. That is tonight’s task, along with making cupcakes for Jen’s birthday tomorrow. These are the ones I made for her last year:

This year I have something pretty special planned, too!