If at first you don’t succeed, continue baking the damn eclairs.

In case you haven’t noticed or aren’t fortunate enough to live in the midwest during winter… it’s fucking really, really cold here.  Today feels balmy in the 20’s, that’s how bad it’s been. Take Friday for example… I woke up 10 minutes earlier than usual to put on all of my layers, just to jog a half mile to the gym.

I ran in a full winter jacket and snow pants.   I used to be tougher than this and could handle any run in a few long sleeves and tights, but now I’m a wimp. Don’t judge me. 

My body wasn’t cold (it was a 5 minute jog!) but my lungs were screaming and I think I developed brain freeze by breathing.  Awesome.

*Sidenote, I must admit, I think reading ‘Game of Thrones’ is causing me to become more paranoid about the cold weather.  All I can think of is ‘WINTER IS COMING!  OH NO!’  Uhhh, duh Lisa, it’s February in Chicago. Winter has been here.*

The lock on the gate of my apartment complex froze and refused to open. Luckily, there is a used bookstore across the street from me and I was able to hang out there until the Husband came to rescue me.

Anyway, this weekend I spent my time doing plenty of indoor activities:

• Reading ‘Game of Thrones’
• Watching hockey and eating pizza and drinking beer with friends
• Wearing my new sweaters/cardigans
• Drinking butterscotch schnapps and hot chocolate
• Eating dinner and going to a bar with my girlfriends
• Watching the Superbowl with the Husband and his family

What I also did was bake chocolate eclair cupcakes from scratch.  You see, it was the Husband’s dad’s birthday yesterday and we all went over to the Husband’s parents’ house to celebrate, and he likes chocolate eclairs… so I figured I would make them into cupcakes!  I should really get some ‘wife points’ or maybe even ‘daughter-in-law points’ for this.

Anyway, I found a recipe for the cupcakes so I thought baking these things would be super-easy and take about an hour.  Any recipe found through random Google searches must be great, right?!

Wrong.

The recipe I originally used was awful and I created two batches that had to be thrown away.  Then I made filling that had to be thrown away.  Seriously, the filling somehow turned into a solid omelette.  This is never a good sign.

Well, finally I wised up and created my own recipe from lots of other recipes on the oh-so-wise internet. In the end, everything turned out great.

It only took about 5 hours.  Oy vey.

Please direct your attention to the top right picture… see how flat the first batch turned out compared to the second?! But, eventual success!

It was a good thing I had plans to go out drinking after this ordeal, because I have a super-low tolerance for kitchen mishaps and was in desperate need of vodka after taking the second batch of ruined eclairs out of the oven.

Luckily, third time’s the charm, and I can proudly say I defeated the chocolate eclair cupcakes.

Domesticity is within my reach….

I hope you had a warm and delicious Superbowl weekend!

There are certain types of cupcakes that can (and should) totally be eaten for breakfast.

Yesterday I made snickerdoodle cupcakes (from scratch) before noon.  This is the definition of success!  The wine in the picture is kind of a lie, because I drank it on Friday night while making lentil meatballs, but then I drank a lot of wine yesterday celebrating my dad’s birthday (and eating the cupcakes) so you see, it all works out.

As  bonus, our apartment was filled with smells of cinnamon.  Scrumptious.  And, as a second added bonus, everyone loved the cupcakes and I wasn’t forced to eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner… which has happened a time or two before with baked goods.  I still lack some confidence in my baking abilities, so when people like my ‘creations’ I get pretty excited.

We spent yesterday at my dad’s house hanging out with family and eating pasta with shrimp and wine sauce and black bean soup and cheese and crackers and cupcakes… it really was my dream meal, and it wasn’t even my birthday!   A good time was had by all.

Today is a relaxing day in our house. I’m watching hockey, then plan on transitioning to football… I already went to the gym and had a massage and later we may even cook dinner.  The Husband has promised me quinoa burgers and I am quite excited!  Have I mentioned how much I really enjoy being married (to a man who cooks)?

Even our little monster is resting today.

I hope everyone is having a very-wonderful weekend filled with all things happy and warm and delicious.

I was basically forced to eat cake for breakfast (every day this week).

My office is doing a really neat holiday website (for charity) and we were all asked to contribute something. So, being the team player than I am, I decided to ‘donate’ a cookie recipe.  The instructions were to submit a recipe and take a picture of the finished product.

No problem!  The other weekend I baked two batches of cookies and brought them into the office and was finished with the whole ‘project’ fairly painlessly (which was actually shocking considering I have quite a bad reputation in the kitchen).

these little cookies caused BIG problems.

Then, one of my coworkers who was in charge of putting the site together asked me to send in ‘process’ pictures of the baking process.  Well, that was unexpected.  I didn’t want to bake cookies again, so I figured the only logical thing to do was to bake something with most of the same ingredients and take pictures of that, instead – Pumpkin cake it was!

The only problem with the whole plan was I then had an entire cake. And the Husband was out of town for the week.  And somehow he misplaced the only pan I had that could transport a cake to my office or anywhere else where other people could help me eat it.

I was stuck with an entire cake.  To eat by myself.  (This is the very definition of a first world problem).

I ate pieces of cake for breakfast and dinner – averaging around 4 pieces a day.

This actually worked out pretty well because when the Husband travels for work I don’t know how to go about gathering/preparing food and I ran out of cheese and crackers… so cake seemed to be a fitting substitute.  Bonus:  I actually did manage to bring in a few slices of the cake to work (in a tiny Tupperware container) and got rave reviews – domestic success!

Anyway, the whole point is that it took me 2 batches of cookies and 1 cake to manage to complete a tiny little holiday project for work.  There was probably a more efficient way to do this, but I’m incapable of being efficient in the kitchen.  I did consider cutting down the recipe to make half a cake but it involved too much math.  Don’t judge me.

If you see pictures of me and my clothes look a bit tighter than usual, now you know why.  🙂