♥ My 7 Hour Baking Marathon: I really do need a life (and now, probably some bigger pants). ♥

   So, at this point, I'm sure anyone reading may think I have a screw or two loose.

    "7 Hour Baking Marathon"?

    ...

    Let me explain..

    After a week of doing absolutely nothing but following the oh-so-riveting cycle of babysitting, making dinner, and cleaning (i.e. feeling like a part time mom), I was on the verge of going stir-crazy. I'm a teenage girl, and after sitting on Facebook each day, always reading about everyone's fun summer adventures, it gets a bit...frustrating, always being locked up inside.

    Don't get me wrong, there's plenty to do at home: Besides being obsessed with food, I dabble a bit with art, so I've always got loads of projects and ideas I could work on. Then there's my list of movies I keep telling myself I should watch, but bumming around watching TV all day isn't exactly one of my favorite activities. Then there's the complete opposite: getting my butt on the treadmill, but we all know just how fun that is. Then there's my thing with organizing things (I'm a bipolar OCD: at times, I'll freak if there's the slightest crumb lying on my kitchen table; at others, my house could be completely trashed and I couldn't care less.) With summer here and there being no school, there's always plenty of time for me to obsess over making sure every pantry,closet,and cabinet is perfectly organized.

    But really...in all honesty, what teenager wants to spend her summer cooped up inside her house all day, exercising and organizing??

    Not this cupcake, that's for sure.

    In addition to my extreme boredness, I had a "slight" hormone attack this week, and after rummaging through my entire house for the slightest trace of chocolate, none was to be found.

    None.

    (Oh, if only you could have seen my face when I realized my chocolate stash was completely cleaned out....at the same time, my sister broke out in a tantrum bigger than the world itself, and I was not in the mood to deal with her. Time to release those inner-babysitter-demons? I think so.)

   At this point, you can only imagine just how insane I was going: I was beyond  bored, exhausted from dealing with bratty children all day (my siblings decided that bringing our younger cousins over for sleepovers this week would be fun; I think we have different ideas of fun...), PMSing like a (excuse my french,but) bitch, and lacking any sort of cocoa product.

     So, in my desperate time of trying to find something fun and the slightest bit exciting (to me,anyways) to do, and in my also desperate need for chocolate, I decided to break out my mixer and get cracking on some of the baking projects I'd been wanting to do.


    Now, I'm aware that this situation seems pretty normal: a bored teenage girl with a food blog, craving chocolate, decides to bake. That seems pretty normal, right?


   My mom thought that was completely normal...until she woke up Friday morning finding four different freshly baked pastries, laying all around my kitchen.

   Yup...four.

    Let me explain further...

   All week I had been planning a theme for my posts this week: Yellow Foods, to brighten up the dull, rainy week we had been having (or that we were supposed to have: the weather guy told us to expect showers every day this week, but it only rained once all week. Thanks so much, Mr. Weatherman.) So, expecting a dull, depressing, dark week, I planned on using all the yellow foods I had on hand to brighten up the house: lemons for Lemon Cupcakes, Bananas for Banana Bread, and Mangoes for some Mango/Peach Smoothies (even if I find mangoes extremely repulsive, my family and my squishy-fruit-loving boyfriend love them). Sounds tasty, right?

    Unfortunately, I had all the fruit since Saturday, but none of the ingredients necessary for each dish until Thursday. By then though, my chocolate craving had already creeped in,so I was stuck: do I ignore my chocolate cravings and use up the fruit like I planned,before it went bad?

     Being a girl, I knew that option wouldn't work: when a girl wants her chocolate, she wants her chocolate. At the same time, there was no way I'd let perfectly good fruit go bad,so..why not do both?

    It sounded like a good idea Thursday night, and at that point, my craving had gone from moderate to completely-and-uncontrollably desperate, so I went with it.

     So, before I keep rambling, lets get to the actual food part.

    That night, during my 7 hour baking marathon (starting at 11,and finishing at 6 a.m. Thankfully, sleep hasn't been coming my way recently, so that wasn't really a problem), I baked up four lovely treats: Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon-Blueberry Buttercream, Dark Chocolate Espresso Brownies, Banana Bread, and a 2-Layer Triple Chocolate Fudge cake.

     

..I wasn't kidding...

    While yes, it did take 7 hours to do (all the prepping, cleaning, baking, and picture taking), it was well worth it. (Especially for my lovely cake, which I was beyond proud of!) The cupcakes were fragrant, light, and lemony, the banana bread was moist and well, banana-y, the brownies were orgasmically chocolatey, and the cake was well...you can guess from the picture. ☺

    Usually, I'm quite modest about my baking; in fact, sometimes, I'll insult my own work and criticize it until it's crying in a corner. Like I've said before, I'm quite the perfectionist when I want to be, and with baking, I don't even want to be: I have to be ( How does "The Anal Baker" sound as a nickname? No? Hm..) So this time, when for some reason, only one thing didn't live up to my standards, I was ecstatic. Beyond ecstatic, actually. Especially when my mom, the lover of all things cake mix, said my cake was amazing.

    So, if it sounds like I'm bragging, really, I'm not. It's just that with me, usually nothing goes right, so the one time almost everything did, I have a little room to be proud... right?

    Now after posting all these pictures and rambling on for half an hour about my long baking adventure, I'm pretty sure I owe anyone reading this blog the actual recipes for everything. It is, well, a blog, and so in the next couple of hours, I'll have all four recipes up. As for actual food (i.e. the two meals I planned on putting up each week), I'll mention now: I *did* cook this week, and take pictures, but I feel that after putting together 4 posts (5 with this one), anymore this week may be a little overwhelming. So in the next week, after I finish off all the desserts in my house and my pant size grows 5 sizes, I'll be able to focus on real food again. Until then...I hope you're in the mood for dessert! ♥

♥ 11 Days and still no actual posts... I know, I'm a tad slow. ♥

    Well...I feel a little embarrassed.
11 Days since I started my blog, and 11 days since I vowed to post at least 4 recipes weekly. Well, it's been longer than a week, and while it's clear there's no new posts, no pictures, and still no recipes, I can proudly say I have cooked, and I took pictures along the way...just not the best pictures. [Still working on my photography skills. I'm only 16, and my mind is wrapped around 101 things; Who has time for photography on top of all that?! Not to mention my lack of a decent camera.]

    Anyway, yes, I did cook. In fact, just like I promised, I did one dessert, one cupcake recipe, and two...well, neither dessert nor cupcake recipes. The dessert was yet another blueberry muffin recipe (I say another, being that I've tried 5 in the past few months, and I never seem to get a response back that's not an "They're okay".), the cupcake being a Red-Velvet with Cream Cheese Frosting (not as easy as I thought..), and the two "others" being an Italian-Sausage/Tomato/Pasta toss (there's no actual name for it,so I'll think of something eventually..) and a simple (but wonderful) Buttermilk pancake recipe. Out of the four, the best recipe in my opinion are the pancakes; probably because I've already tinkered and edited them to..perfection? Hm.

    Needless to say, there were problems and disasters along the way with every recipe (even the pancakes; I'm almost on my way to becoming a pro-pancake flipper....almost.) And, as much as this probably won't make me sound as (professional? worth-while? trust-worthy?) as I want to sound,...well, I'll just put this out there: the finished products were not perfect. In fact, far from it.
    At first, as soon as I tasted the cupcakes and muffins and realized I didn't like the tastes of them (the muffins especially), I started doubting myself. After-all, I have a very bad tendency to want to do everything perfect the first time around, and when it doesn't come out perfect, it kind of, well, bruises my confidence a bit. Later on though, I realized:
    When I started this blog, I wanted it to be kind of like a first-hand view right into my kitchen as I went along and started my pre-foodie and pre-pastry chef adventure. What I wanted deep-down though, was a picture-perfect blog, with already perfected recipes and beautiful pictures that looked like they were professionally taken. Well, as I mopped and stared at my ugly, messed up muffins and faded-red red-velvet cupcakes, reality hit and I realized: as I said before, I'm only 16, and I've got decent cooking skills; not professional ones. My blog will never be like "that", or maybe it will in a few years, but for now, it's CupcakeGirl's blog: the blog with unappetizing pictures, far from perfect recipes, and tons of my mistakes, being shared and put out there for anyone on the web to see.

    Now, for anyone who's reading (if there's actually anyone there..), my only hope for you is to learn from my mistakes, that is, if you'd actually be dumb enough to make them (I'm not the smartest chef in the kitchen...). But, for anyone who's far above my level and can help in anyway, or, for anyone who's willing to take my messy recipes and fix them, I'd love and appreciate any advice; any way for me to become a better chef and learn is greatly appreciated.

    So, before I continue to ramble on and bore (any of the readers I may have) to death, I'm going to wrap this up so I can get cozy on my couch and maybe even watch Julie and Julia again. After all, it is the main reason for all of this.

    Anywho, the recipes and pictures I rambled about earlier will be posted in the next two days, so please, bear with me.

     To all the bloggers and anyone else out there... Good night, and sleep tight. Talk to you soon! ♥