Pumpkin Cream Cupcakes

You didn't think I'd be so vicious as to not include the recipe for the cupcakes did you?

Alright, alright. I suppose it wouldn't have been that surprising.

Here we go:

Pumpkin Cream Cupcakes

Ingredients
1 pkg. Spice cake mix
1 pkg. Jell-O Vanilla flavor instant pudding mix
1 Cup canned pumpkin
1 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened
1/4 Cup sugar
1 egg

Directions
1) Preheat oven to 350.
2) Prepare cake batter as directed on package.
3) Add dry pudding mix and pumpkin; mix well.
4) Spoon into 24 paper-lined muffin cups.
5) Beat softened cream cheese with mixer until creamy.
6) Blend in sugar and egg; spoon over batter.
7) Swirl gently with small spoon. (I skipped this step when I realized it's a lot harder than it sounds)
8) Bake 18 to 21 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
9) Cool 5 minutes before removing cupcakes to wire rack to cool completely.

Yields 24 cupcakes.

I iced mine with a teeny tiny amount of cream cheese frosting. to keep them moist for two days. They are mighty divine without any sort of frosting/icing.

Happy Turkey Day America!!

How to bake: The Hard Way

When receiving my potluck assignment for Turkey Day from my mother, I volunteered to bring "my dish" (Sweet Tater Casserole) along with a new recipe for Pumpkin Cream Cupcakes I'd found while perusing a holiday magazine at my sister's house.

Before using my brain, I came to the harsh reality that I had just offered my cupcake skills without the recollection that, in the whirlwind of this, my regulation size cupcake pans were no longer in my possession. Do I think they will be again?

I sure as hell hope so. If not...well...Dear Santa...

And yes, it has all been so catastrophically blown out of proportion, that "swinging by" to pickup something that is respectively mine is not an option.

I won't go getting ahead of myself here for the sake of being chronological, but be prepared to burst a blood vessel in your forehead from laughter at what I did have at my disposal. I am lazy so running out to the store (for the THIRD time last night) to pick up new cupcake pans was not an option either. Lazy.

Since I was making a batch of these num-nums for the family to enjoy, I figured why not double the sucker for Husfriend to score some brownie points at the ole workplace. Plus, well, they've sent him home with requests in the past. I'm always down for a good stroking of the ego. The past couple weeks could qualify for a one-hour Swedish massaging of the ego. I'll take what I can get.

I started by doing a predictable photo shoot of the ingredients, minus the cream cheese which totally makes up the "Cream" part of the whole damn recipe.

Cut me some slack. I had just discovered the "Widescreen" feature on Husfriend's camera. My mind was in a flurry of make-do camera bliss alright?!

I got these absolutely adorable cupcake liners from smeeks for presentation sake.

Then, in all my greasy glory, Husfriend snapped an action shot for the sake of the blog. Before my innocent smile and slight head tilt, I was barking at him, "Now the flash isn't set to go off so make sure you hold the camera still so it's not blurry. *snap* Is it blurry?!" I am so very pleasant.

Please applaud "skinny arm", "chin jut", and "suck in and don't breathe". 

I'm a professional photo poser. 

Excuse "makeup free" and "insomnia eye bags".

After mixing all of the tastiest smelling cake batter ingredients in my Halloween candy bowl, I started the 2+ hour baking process. Firstly, the Halloween candy bowl was the largest bowl that could hold the crap ton of mixes, eggs, water, oil, and pumpkin that doubling the recipe required. Secondly, remember how I mentioned I wasn't properly equipped for baking six dozen cupcakes in a timely manner? see: Lazy Ass.

Yes, you are seeing this right. I used my in-case-there-is-a-bit-more-than-one-dozen pans. I keep my little six cup guys handy on the off chance the recipe that yields 12 turns out to yield 16. Damn, I should have been a boy scout. So prepared.

Each dozen took twenty minutes to bake so 20 minutes x 4 dozen + (1 dozen + 11 cupcakes worth of extra batter) = >2 hours of baking time alone.

Being the genius planner aheader I am, I started this daunting task at, oh, I dunno, 8:30pm. Again, because I am a genius. Say it with me kids...G-e-n-i-u-s. Gold stars and otter pops for everyone. For heaven's sake, don't drip on my carpet!!

Lucky enough for me, So You Think You Can Dance was my meantime entertainment between each dozen. Goodnight I still can't even believe I baked one dozen cupcakes at a time.

These two are, hands down, my favorite couple of the season. Hate me all you want, but Ryan is NOT attractive and Ashleigh bugs the shit out of me. It is that intensely serious. I said shit. P.S. Someone needs to smack her parents with an idiot stick. Who spells Ashley that way?! Gag, gag, vomit.

When the last timer went off for the final eleven cupcakes, I tell you I was ecstatic. They cooled. I iced. We nibbled. I packaged. We slept. Oh joy over all other joys. I. Was. Finished.

Not the most pleasing to the eye, but boy oh boy do the taste buds yearn for these puppies. I cannot wait to share what's left bring these to my mom's tomorrow.

Surprise, surprise!

Here I lounge.

Blogging about nonsense at 11:30pm on a Saturday night.

Husfriend is back east in Pennsylvania under less than ideal circumstances. I've been a total insomniac for the past 48 hours bringing my sleep total up to five whopping hours. Aren't you jealous of my impeccable coping abilities?!

I'm going to start a project that I will admit, I completely stole the concept for from Katie Ness*. *Ass covered.

900 Seconds of Memories. {Insert cleverly designed logo here}

Here's the deal. I'm creating a channel on Vimeo to upload a thirty second video every day for thirty days of Nugget.

Let's be honest, I think with the advent of mommy photography, we all tend to neglect the classic home video footage.

Okay, so maybe my insomnia has lead me to watch an abundance of America's Funniest Home Videos too. Television viewing options are severely limited in the wee hours of the night/morning. Alright?

All of us have thirty seconds to hold a video camera in front of our mugs and document a silly/angry/sad/quirky moment in our child's life. I think this project will force encourage a lot of us to pay more attention to the little things that our rugrat does. Plus I think 900 seconds is the perfect amount of blackmail footage for prom night.

If I were more energetic in my brilliant motivation, I'd have a logo already thrown together. Don't fret, I definitely made an attempt. That attempt proved miserably unfitting and half-assed so we'll revisit that creative attempt tomorrow.

Join me on December 1st for Day One of 900 Seconds of Memories and a snappy little logo and button to smack onto your sidebar.

Family on sale, 50% off.

In lieu of a this particular lapse in friendship, it was brought to my attention that I discount my sisters as just family and not my good friends.

Coming from a "broken family" that brought with it, for me anyway, a semi-truck full of Daddy issues (oh boy, that's post worthy enough in and of itself), I was lucky enough to have my family grow practically overnight when my mom found a great man to remarry.

I already have two blood related sisters that I managed to get along with relatively (no pun intended) well growing up. Barring the mailman/adopted allegory my big sis would feed me when I'd borrow clothes without asking or put maxi pads over the statue of David's man junk on the poster hanging in her bedroom, we got along just fine and dandy. My mom's remarry resulted in the addition of two more older sisters and a younger-by-not-much brother.

My new older sister is eerily just like me. We're considered "street smart". aka, we chose a lot of unconventional methods for taking on certain aspects of our teens and twenties. She smacked me in the face with a startling, yet totally necessary fact about me. I always discount my family as nothing more than family. I invest the dependency of so much of my happiness from the friends who could easily stomp me out like a flaming bag of dog poop on their front step and be done with me. I can't do nothing but agree with her. She may have called me a whore. Lovingly of course. Of course, I could also be doing an ever so poor job of incorporating improvisational name-calling for depth and effect. You decide.

This sisterly bitch slap has been just the thing I needed to help me get my priorities back in the right order. We all know I have a tendency to be a blubbering cry baby on here about not having friends, boo hoo, call the Waa-mbulance why don't you. It's not that I don't have friends. I am SURROUNDED by friends. I've come to realize, in a less than subtle way, that I fabricate this fantastical idea of what a friend is and the daily agenda that, just frankly, does not exist. Um, hi. Yeah. I am delusional.

All of the friends who rallied around me when I was feeling lower than low for dinner, fast-paced boot shopping (though unsuccessful, rather entertaining, ooh pretty dress), silly text banter, 2-hour phone calls. All of that, was real life friendship. At its finest mind you.

I have been doing my best to focus my energies on meeting and connecting more with all of you readers I don't know in person or met one time during a ridiculous trip to Los Angeles for a taping of Dr. Phil. (Hi Julie! Hi Suzanne!) It is wonderful to know that there are women in my same shoes out there that are willing to shoot the breeze with me. To jabber about gas station parking lot empires on Skype while we both try our best to keep our heads from exploding with all the gadgets and gizmos it has to offer. (Hi Loralee!) I'm going to stop there.

I could go on a completely new tangent about feeling like the quick-witted, funny girl again, but perhaps we'll save that for another day. We will. Promise. So we have posts about Daddy issues, being the inappropriately funny broad again, death and its inconsiderate degree of unforgiving suckitude in 2009, and wonderful, liberating new music soon to debut from wonderful songwriters...one in particular...but don't worry, I'll do my best to leave no (wo)man behind.

Couldn't be more like heaven.

Post Destructor, he cranked up the radio when he realized it was The Cure, "Just Like Heaven" and danced. I wasn't quick enough to capture the whole jig, but let me tell you it was a great sigh of relief after the coping-after-discovering-daddy-isn't-coming-home-for-two-days shenanigans ceased.

Motivational Monday

If you know what you want, dump out the crap that gets in the way of your joy.

Making a BOLD statement over at Better After.

Remember that wonderful antique side table with the delicious curves and oozing character that I transformed?

It's currently being featured over at Better After.

Infinite thanks go out to Lindsey for posting such a bold piece. The average posts are typically more...subdued? So far, most of the feedback is "WOW". I'm pretty sure every comment includes the shocked reaction. I am head over heels in love with my flaming, bright, in-your-face yellow end table with pewter knobs. It's loud and out of control, just like me. :)

While you're there, be sure to peruse the other magnificent things some people do with other people's junk.