Lions and monkeys and zebras... oh my!

Today I can call myself a professional baker!  One of James' coworkers asked me to make cupcakes for his son's second birthday this weekend.  He wanted two dozen vanilla cupcakes with green frosting (like the Easter cupcakes, but without the eggs)

and two dozen chocolate cupcakes decorated like jungle animals.

This is the first time I've been paid to make cupcakes for someone.  It's very exciting.  Mama needs a new pair of shoes!  LOL.  I really am going to buy a pair of shoes with the money.  I need a pair of comfortable slip-on walking shoes for when we go to Paris this summer.

Mmmmm... cupcakes

I've become known as the Cupcake Lady at James's work.  Unless what I'm baking calls for whole wheat flour, it's usually best for me to send my baked goods away so I don't end up eating them all myself.  So anytime I find a new cupcake or cookie recipe I'm dying to try out I bake up a batch and send them along with my husband to dispose of with his coworkers (after trying one or two myself, naturally).

So, without further ado, cupcakes for Easter, or Good Friday, really.  But green frosting and eggs are much more fun to eat than crosses and a crown of thorns.

Just call me Betty Crocker

I love to bake.  I enjoy cooking, but I LOVE baking.  The first thing I ever made were brownies which I entered into the county fair when I was nine.  I didn't win (I think I placed third... out of three entries), but I've been hooked ever since.  I have a pretty intense sweet tooth, so part of my infatuation stems from the ability baking gives me to indulge in whatever dessert I can whip up, but I also love the scientific aspect of it all.  There are so many similarities between what I do in the lab all day and what I do when I'm making a batch of chocolate chip cookies (perhaps my all time favorite cookie... I collect chocolate chip cookie recipes like some women collect shoes).  Add A to B, mix, heat for 30 minutes, chill, and serve.  Though what I do in the lab is not nearly as tasty, or as fattening.  And since baking is such a science I understand that once you start tweaking the ingredients you'll begin to mess with the outcomes.  Thus, I rarely alter recipes.  I stick to instructions faithfully and if I don't like a result I toss the recipe out and look for a new one.  But I recently started tweaking a muffin recipe and after several batches I've developed it into one that I'm quite proud of.

It started with a bran muffin recipe from the Fiber One website. Their recipe uses crushed up Fiber One cereal and two containers of vanilla yogurt.  I loved the muffins, but I wasn't thrilled with having to crush up cereal and buy individual yogurt containers for each batch of muffins.  So I started tweaking.  Switching out wheat bran for the cereal and plain yogurt for the vanilla.  But then I needed to up the sweetener and play around with flour proportions.  And after a couple weeks I've settled on a recipe that I really like and is all my own!  I love these muffins because they're hearty, thanks to the bran and ground flax seed, with just a little indulgence, thanks to the chocolate chips.  I have one for breakfast every morning with a big glass of milk, and I also eat one as a pre-workout snack.  So, without further ado:

Chocolate Chip Bran Muffins

1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
12 oz plain nonfat yogurt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup wheat bran
1/4 cup ground flax seed (optional)
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips

- Whisk together the egg, oil, yogurt, brown sugar, and vanilla.
- Stir in the flours, bran, flax seed, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips until just combined.  Be careful not to over mix or the muffins will become tough.
- Portion out batter into muffin tins sprayed with cooking spray. (I usually get 16-17 muffins per batch.)
- Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.
- Immediately remove from muffin tins and let cool on a wire rack.

Nutritional information: (per muffin) 169 calories, 7.6 g fat (2.7 g saturated fat), 22 g carbohydrates, 2.5 g fiber, 4.2 g protein

We've got a bed wetter in the house

We have two cats. We adopted Marley, a long-haired black feline, near the end of 2008 from a friend whose cat had a litter of kittens. James was kind of resistant at first, but when I told him I either wanted a cat or a baby he quickly came around to allowing a purring ball of fur into our home. (He knew I was joking... sort of.) And that was supposed to be it. One cat was enough for James. But Marley would get so lonely when we were gone all day at work (not to mention if we ever were out of town for a weekend!) that I finally convinced James we needed to get Marley a companion.

We adopted Reba, a short-haired orange and white tabby, from the Humane Society this past August. Thankfully Marley and Reba got along beautifully from the moment we brought her home. The only problem we've ever really had with Reba has been the occasional night when she's urinated on our bed. She did it several times right after we brought her home. We figured maybe as a kitten she was too afraid/lazy to make the trek across house to use the litter box in the laundry room. So we put a litter box in our bedroom for a few weeks and that seemed to take care of the problem. She did it again once after being spayed, but we figured it was probably due to a combination of the medication and the uncomfortable E-collar the vet sent her home wearing so she couldn't chew at her stitches.

But then she urinated on our bed again last night. Out of the blue. Which mystifies me. I'm hoping this doesn't become a habit for her. We've washed the sheets, sent the down comforter to the dry cleaners, and are keeping our fingers crossed that this was a one-time fluke. Otherwise somebody's getting locked in the laundry room at night.