bend or you'll break

Sometimes the path you start out on is not the one you end up on.  I am sure learning this!

Moving to New Orleans was never something I imagined could happen to us in this life. I was finishing my masters program, going on to the doctoral program, going to live in Brookline or another lovely Boston area for a while. Get a dog. That whole deal. Now I am in the South, jobless, trying to figure out what I'm doing on a day-by-day basis.

There is a yoga quote that goes, "Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape."

I am physically flexible, but not so flexible in any other way. I set my goals, I meet them. I know what I want...okay, not so often but when I finally decide what i want... I always get it. I am a little controlling because I know that the consistency and stability that come with my control gets things done, and productivity makes me happy. When things don't work out the way I want them, however, I get a little "bent out of shape." That's just the way I am.

The other day I set out to make a new cakeball flavor for my friend's birthday. I thought strawberry would be interesting so I mixed up the strawberry cake and strawberry frosting.

mixing in the frosting

This is when I tasted it and should have turned back. But, I thought it wasn't that bad, just different. Fun. And the great pink color was flashy. So I kept on going. Forming the balls.

refrigerating

Getting the red vanilla candy melts to the right temperature and dipping them all in. And, finally, decorating them with white vanilla candy melts. I thought a dark chocolate candy melt outside would be a good flavor match for the strawberry inside so I saved half of the cakeballs to make the chocolate ones the next day.

And voila! They were done! They looked bright and pretty.

I was happy. Until I tasted one. Blech. I think they were like fruity pebbles (my sister used to loooove fruity pebbles). Ben says they're like captain crunch berries. I think both of those fake, sugary, yucky cereals are way better tasting than these.

So, I threw them all in the garbage and was grouchy for a while.

After ten minutes of being frustrated, I took a deep breath and decided to bake a snack.

Which led to me baking my provolone/parmesan/chive popovers, but this time I made them huge. An hour later I had cheesy, oniony, warm, lovely popovers and took a break from all the "doing."

mmm 

I settled down with a few popovers, and then went to yoga. 

Things hadn't exactly gone as I planned. I wanted those cakepops to be done and waiting on the counter to bring out to dinner on Friday night. But, life doesn't always go as you plan- even if I truly believe that it always will. When it doesn't, I'm totally surprised and angry and thrown off-guard. 

It may seem silly, but little things like cakepops not working out bend me out of shape. This time, however, I decided to just let it go and make something else.

So the next day I whipped up cappuccino brownies, put a little white vanilla candy melts on top, and went out to dinner with friends to celebrate a birthday. I even used a box mix (from WholeFoods) because you don't always have to be "perfect."- another lesson I am slowly learning. 

Life is too short to cry over cakepops. 

baking bida

So, it's no secret that I like to bake. I always have. In high school my dad used to give me his credit card all the time so that I could go to the store to make a new recipe. I still remember the time I used his alcohol to make some orange-liquor dessert and all the neighbors came over. I'm sure it was not good. But, they all smiled and tried it. I definitely need some brave neighbors now to help me indulge in one of my favorite pastimes. Ben's classmates are getting as many as I can give away :)

In graduate school, baking became something that I could do for myself to break up long hours of reading or writing papers. There is something so therapeutic in preparing good food- but cooking will be for another blog posting- today is about baking. Muffins- a food that can be healthy and comes in its own little wrapper so that it can travel anywhere- are one of my favorite things to make. Which is why it was so exciting when I found my 500 best muffin recipes book. People at school probably got pretty tired of the many muffins I brought in. I really love muffins.

Some of my go-to favorites that I whip up pretty often are oatmeal scones (everyone I know has gotten these from me), chocolate covered pretzels (something Ben likes!), chocolate peanut butter pie, and all kinds of cookies including my favorite- cherry-chocolate chunk (mmm).

Since moving to New Orleans, however, I have been trying out some new desserts. I made a vanilla cupcake with chocolate frosting and cookie dough hidden inside it. I made mini pumpkin breads with fall scenes on them (pumpkin, leaves, etc.).

pumpkin breads

And after finding Bakerella! online I decided I would try my hand at cakeballs and then cakepops. My first attempt were chocolate inside with chocolate-mint outside and chocolate inside with peanubutter outside. I made these to take to Michigan for a big family reunion. I think they turned out pretty good, but I should probably try something one time first before bringing them to give to others!

my first cake balls

After I made these cake balls and they worked out I moved on to cake pops. In reality, cake pops are easier to make because you can dip them in the candy coating with a stick. Look at my first attempt at cake pops:

mmmm

cake pops!

Okay, so nothing amazing but they taste pretty darn good. Soon I'm going to try making characters and shapes out of them. I'm just not sure what I should start with. 

Today I realized that my butter pecan cupcakes with caramel icing needed something on top. So, I used candy molds that Michael's arts & crafts stores sell for $1+something to make some shell candy. For my first attempt I used some leftover red candy melts. I'm not completely happy with how they look, but luckily I have some other colors to mess around with. 

shell candies

Then I got crazy and used these molds that are supposed to be for putting candy shapes around pretzel rods. They have been sitting in my pantry for months calling to me. But, I had no pretzel rods. So, I just poured in some leftover candy without the pretzels. hehe. what a mess.

not sure what to do with these

Sorry for no photos of the cupcakes. I haven't gotten around to finishing them yet and it is too warm in my kitchen (i ran the dryer, silly me). So, I'll have to give an update later. 

Tomorrow i'll be using fondant to make little hearts on top of bigger cookie hearts. I will finally get to use the food-pens that I've had in my fridge by writing on the fondant! I'm pretty excited.

My cousin Lauryn usually puts a question at the end of her blog. 

So: What are some of your favorite things to bake?