Show me the love!

 Happy BELATED Valentine's Day! To commemorate I'm going to share one of my loves: baking.

A few weeks ago my roommates, Shelby and I took a cupcake class at Butter Lane. It was a Groupon okay? And I really like cupcakes.

And I also started this post on Valentines day. Hence the weird intro. But anyhow back to the story.

It was a class of 12. Teams of four. Guess who was in my group?

We made (as a class) vanilla, chocolate and banana cupcakes as well as vanilla, chocolate, cream cheese and peanut butter frosting (we voted on this and split the vanilla in half to get enough). My group was in charge of the banana cupcakes and cream cheese frosting. YUM.

I learned a lot about baking cake. Little, basic, scientific explanations about why it's important to cream together butter and sugar for so long. That there is reason to the order of adding wet and dry into the mix. Why you fold in banana last (because they are a gluten and over beating makes the cake tough and dry).

And let's just say I think our cakes turned out the best. Well-shaped and even. And our frosting was yum.

Winning cupcakes!

We learned how to frost the cupcakes Butter Lane style. Then there was a contest to see who could get it the most beautiful. I'll give you three guesses to who won...YAY ME! Too bad I left my prize, a gift of half a dozen cupcakes, in the kitchen when I rushed out after class. But we did not forget our cupcakes. It was free for all grab at the end, so the cupcakes I took home weren't necessarily all decorated by me...or the roommates. Or Shelby.

It was great fun and my love for baking has not decreased since then. Vivian and Mattie visited this weekend. We made homemade oreos. A post about their visit is forthcoming. I should definitely try to be more frequent than my current semi-monthly pace.