Here a Chick. There a Chick. Everywhere a Chick Chick.

Cupcakes: Bringing people together all over the world.

It's Spring Break, bring out the carrot cake, deviled eggs, Peeps and spring chickens. Spring chickens? Yeah, spring chickens. Keep reading.

An obvious spring cupcake choice was carrot cake. We decided on this great recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Our favorite part was the Maple Cream Cheese frosting. For several reasons:

1. We love cream cheese.

2. We love cream cheese frosting.

3. We love maple syrup.

4. One time Aimee had a maple-related accident.

5. One of our friends last name is Maples.

You may have noticed a small object in Jessica's right hand. That object happens to be a young spring chicken, named Lucy (short for Lucifer). Jessica used to have unconditional agape love for Lucy (see here). Until Lucy hit chicken puberty (we've all been there). Lucy lost her fluffiness, grew feathers, formed an unusually long neck and an attitude to go along with it.

*We would like to pause to mention that Lucy had nothing to do with our baking experience. We keep a clean kitchen.*

Unconditional Agape Love:

Lucifer:

When Jessica realized she couldn't love Lucy in an appropriate fashion, she made the mature decision to deliver her to a new home that would show here the love she deserved. We knew just the place. Needless to say, it was here that Lucy met her soulmate, Chris P Cox.

Photo Credit: Leighton Cusack

It was a tale of love and loss for Lucy as Chris had to return to Michigan shortly after this photo was taken. Which has brought us to the conclusion, that the only true love in this dark world is Jesus, our resurrected Savior, and the agape love of spring-themed cupcakes. Yeah, there will be more of those to come. Stay tuned for Spring Break baking.

Love Love Love,

Aim & J

Happy Birthday Jonathan!

Monkey Business.

Sometimes we don't like to follow the rules. Like tonight for instance. We didn't feel like following just one recipe...so we followed 3. (Sidenote: If you haven't picked up, we've steered away from restricting ourselves to the bounds of the cupcake book. We've expanded to blogs, websites...whatever inspires us.) When pondering what type of cupcakes we would make this week we knew we wanted the flavors of peanut butter, chocolate, and banana. However, we couldn't find one particular recipe that hit the nail on the head. We found a banana cake recipethat sounded dreamy, but that wasn't enough. We needed to fulfill our cravings for peanut butter and chocolate as well. So we found this peanut butter cream cheese frosting recipe (because you gotta have cream cheese...please don't look at the calorie count). As for chocolate, we decided a store bought brownie recipe would suffice (dark chocolate...go big or go home).

Tragedy struck when we had a mixer-related near-fire emergency crisis. Whilst using the mixer to make the frosting, there was an undeniable electrical fire smell. We value our lives more than cream cheese frosting, so we unplugged the mixer and went back to the basics: bicepts and brawn. While some of you may know Aimee has a current ailment in her knee, her upper body is stronger than ever.

Churn baby churn....

We have special dedication this week. Special little cupcakes for a special little monkey named Emma Trevino...who turned 19 today, not 18 (a common misconception). We love her spunk, spirit, and spirally hair.

Until next time....

Cupcakes and Love,

Aim & J

Dreamcakes.

This week, we set our eyes on a (more difficult than usual) prize, Chocolate-Covered Hi Hats. "What's a Hi Hat?", one may ask.

We would answer, "It's a dreamcake."

A dreamcake (or Hi Hat, we'll let you decide), is a chocolate cake topped with a homemade marshmallow cream filling covered with a chocolate shell.

The first step, making the cake, was no problem. The challenge came when we started the filling. While the ingredients are simple, the actions one must take to establish the appropriate cream consistency defy our normal kitchen etiquette. The directions called for a double boiler which, a) we didn't know what was and b) we didn't own.

This is what separates the little girls from the women. And us women decided to be scrappy. So we concocted our own double boiler from unmentioned household items. Little did we know the directions were to use to double boiler for 12 minutes. This was a long 12 minutes when holding together your own double boiler whilst carefully whipping your marshmallow filling.

Needless to say we walked away as women. We then piped the cupcakes with the marshmallow filling. Refrigerated. And dipped in melted chocolate.

Ta-Da.

If you're wondering if these are really as gooey as they appear to be...yes, yes they are. (Remember...they are called dreamcakes).

Disclaimer: Remember that previously mentioned gooey-ness? These cupcakes are extremely difficult to eat. After attempting several different methods, we still haven't mastered a proper eating technique.

We have a few extras lying around to the first bidders. Let us know if you're interested. Until next time...

Love Love Love,

Aim & J

P.S. Yesterday was National Cupcake Day. We hope you celebrated. We did.