Birth of the cyclone

Yesterday, amidst the crazy winds and the National Christmas Tree toppling, was Kelsey's 23rd birthday. Kelsey, of Kelsey and Chelsea, went to Denison with me, is in my sorority, is infamous for breakin out the cyclone, and (lucky for me) currently lives and works in DC. Of course, a birthday celebration is not complete without a cake (see birthday cake for my housemate Sydney; it's on the baking blog that i share with Kayla). So i made a Margarita birthday cake, because no other cake could match up to the cyclone that is Kelsey. Chocolate cake? Nah. Plain white on white? Booring. Let's break out of the box and turn a crazy cocktail into a cake. And of course, no margarita cake would be complete without this ingredient found in both the cake and icing:

Personally, I'm not a fan. But in a cake? Why not.

ahh..the fruits of my labor. (haha get it!?)

A word about the cake: I adapted it from a cupcake recipe. I doubled the recipe to make a 2-layer cake, failing to take into account how not-substantial the icing was and how much it was meant for a cupcake-form. I worried about the cake's stability. I tried to give it a little encouragement by adding sprinkles. They were festive and gave it that little extra push it needed to stay together...i think. But cake and I braved the 30mph+ winds to Kelsey's birthday shindig. I never got a decent picture of the final product but I was able to snag this one of the birthday girl herself digging in:

While i'm not a huge fan of tequila, or maragaritas for that matter, the cake was very tasty...i think the crowd of intoxicated party-goers agreed.. Perfectly sweet and you could taste every flavor ..lime..tequila.. Cupcake form would be exceptional if I do say so myself. Also exceptional was seeing Kelsey, Chelsea, and Alison, and catching up and meeting new people.

Happy Birthday Kels!

When life hands you lemons..

..make lemonade.

So when life handed me a sick day, I made bread ...once i was feeling better and was able to stomach the idea of looking at food and actually stomach food... plus I was out of bread. So I tied on my new apron from my mom and made Challah from Baking with Julia, by Dorie Greenspan. A previous Challah bake left me with a flat, sorta dense Challah but this one, this one...

The loaves rose well. They are beautifully colored. The inside is so light and fluffy. And it filled the house with most wonderful smell ever. Also, I hear when life hands you 2 day old challah, make french toast. Ugh, if you insist..

In other news, a year ago was this:

while it was all really stressful and time consuming,

i miss it.

funfetti.

Last night, housemate Josh introduced me to the concept of funfetti cookies. Up until that point I was only aware of funfetti cakes and cupcakes. But cookies!??

NB: if you haven't had funfetti, you're proobably from wyoming, hey max, and you should go and get it and bake it right now, in whatever form you so desire, because it is so good and will make you happy.

So Josh and I ran down to the corner market to get the ingredients (only 3!, 4 if you want icing), but the corner market didn't have the cake mix. So we went to the other corner market and they didn't have it either. We walked home feeling let down..dejected..defeated by the corner stores..realizing we would have to wait until the next day to get the ingredients and bake them.

But today was met with great success!

while homemade cookies from scratch are delicious,

funfetti cake mix + oil + eggs = simple and a party in your mouth.

i mean, look how happy the doughboy is

AND THE WAIT WAS WORTH IT