Science and Sparkles

Since I'm in the thick of my busy final year of residency, I'm only able to do papercrafting on a need-to basis these days...so I'm trying to manufacture more need-to situations. ;) 

My friend, Amy, got a full time teaching job a few months ago and so I volunteered to make a card for our Career small group to sign and congratulate her. I had a small bottle of glitter that I had been saving since high school and it was great finally coming up with a way of using them. 

A very simple design, the lettering needs work but overall, it was great having an excuse to pull out my supplies again. :)

Black Forest Cupcakes

The sour cherry crop this year was not as plentiful as in previous years but I still had enough to make a few batches of cherry filling. With a more limited cherry supply, I decided to be ambitious and try my hand at making Black Forest cupcakes. I've never made stuffed cupcakes before so I wasn't sure if the filling was just going to sink to the bottom and end up being soggy. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my technique of layering cake batter, then filling and then batter again actually worked. I whipped up some cream and shaved a Lindor chocolate on top for decoration and then voila! Looked good and tasted good too! The only thing I think I'll change is that next time, I will add a bit more rum but otherwise, I count this experiment as a success. :)

We start with fresh picked cherries. It's a fair bit of work but incredibly satisfying to harvest your own fruit.

I pitted about 8 cups of cherries by hand. A pair of headphones and some pop music is recommended.

Flour, sugar and cornstarch made up the dry ingredients. Pretty simple.

Then you cook everything.

Lovely, bright red cherry filling - yum!

The tricky part about layering batter-filling-batter is trying not to make a mess.

I've learned over time how much to fill the cups so that my cupcakes are not overflowing.

I was quite proud of myself that the filling worked!

After that, the rest is just decoration. :)

Not bad for our 100th post, eh? Yep, that's right - it took three years but we've finally broken the 100 mark. Time for some (cup)cake to celebrate!