Good morning!

I'm pretty sure I can blame all of my AP teachers from high school for ruining my circadian rhythm and sleep cycle, because I am NOT a morning person. Unlike most people, I don't need a steaming cup of coffee in my system to become an approachable and functional human being of our society. No, what I really need is about 5 more hours of sleep. Or 8.

(Most) Sunday mornings are an exception. My dad is a Lector at our church and he is usually assigned to read for Mass at 6:30 AM. This usually means that, if I'm not tip-toeing back inside my home at an unreasonable hour on a Saturday night, my bleary-eyed self is stumbling out of bed at 5:45 AM to join my dad in church. Promptly after coming home from mass at around 7:20 AM, I can be found face-planted in my pillow to add onto the 3+ hours of sleep I got the night before.

I know. Call me lazy, I can take it.

My favorite Sunday mornings, though, take a bit more effort. These mornings include breakfast with my parents at the table, and rummaging through the Sunday paper to find the Target ad and to attempt the crossword puzzle in the Arts and Books section of the LA Times. My mom usually has breakfast prepared for us when we get back from church. On the mornings she doesn't, my dad and I take the reigns in the kitchen.

This morning I was feeling a bit more awake than usual, and my dad wanted to make pancakes. Okay, here's a little known fact about me. I don't like pancakes. It might be because every personal attempt at making them has yielded crepes. They're delicious crepes, but my inability to make thick and fluffy pancakes has ingrained a distaste for them. Anyway, I'm pretty sure my dad was a bit disappointed when I crinkled my nose at the thought of pancakes on such a gorgeous Sunday morning.

But then I remembered this. Cinnamon Roll Pancakes. Thank goodness for StumbleUpon.

It took some convincing, but my dad gave in.

We added apple chunks in the batter and we didn't use the Cream Cheese frosting, so it was more of an Apple-Cinnamon Swirl Pancake. It was perfect. As my mom said, "apple and cinnamon are soulmates."

Serve warm and with no syrup. If you're like me, you'll love the contrasting fluffy/crispy textures.

This is a great reason to stay awake on a Sunday morning.

Baby pancake!

Scrambled eggs with tomato, ham, and cheese


A beautiful golden-brown :)

No...THIS is a great reason to stay awake on a Sunday morning.

<3<3<3

Happy holidays!!!

48 cupcakes, 4 batches of frosting, and 7 hours later, I decided that I don't have the energy (or proper tools) to be a professional cupcake baker. *SIGH*. Oh well, there's always teaching music! :p

I decided to go with the idea that I should bake cupcakes for presents this year. Do I regret that decision? Absolutely not. Was I tired? ABSOLUTELY. Will I be participating in another baking marathon? Weeeeell, maybe. But not for awhile :)

I was really thinking about Christmas and the different flavors that you see around the holidays, and I did some searching to see which of those flavors could be incorporated into cupcakes. I finally settled on 4 winter-themed cupcakes...and here's the first one up!

Cinnamon Cupcakes

I used this recipe to create the Cinnamon cake base, but I decided to add to the cinnamon flavor by making a butter-cream cheese cinnamon frosting! Unfortunately, I can't really help you with the frosting recipe; I ended up improvising most of it. I CAN tell you that I forgot to add the buttermilk to the cake...oops. So for those of you who ate these, I'm sorry if they tasted kind of bland! I would definitely make these again, but next time I won't forget the buttermilk, and I would probably throw in some apples into the batter. These would be DELICIOUS for breakfast :)


Next in the line-up is another cupcake that is suitable for breakfast, especially with the Maple syrup cream cheese frosting that I ended up using on top.

Pumpkin Gingerbread Cupcake

I had A LOT of batter; so much, in fact, that I ended up making a dozen of these cupcakes, and 20 mini cupcakes (which were served for breakfast the next day). I don't have a recipe for the frosting, but I can tell you that I used about a half a block of cream cheese, and added maple syrup and powdered sugar to taste. You may want to add more cream cheese, but if you're not a fan of tooth-decaying gobs of frosting on your cupcakes, half a block will be enough.

The next dozen is a recipe that I experimented with earlier in the month, and I took these cupcakes (in mini form) to the Annual Fund potluck (whoo, shout out to the AF team!)
One of the things that I love the most about the chilly weather is that I get to bundle up and enjoy a nice steaming cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows. I tried to capture this flavor in cupcake form, and here's the result:

Hot Cocoa Cupcakes

I revisited the chocolate cupcake recipe that I used for Jonathan's birthday which were suitable for even those who aren't real chocolate fans. For the frosting, I used this light and fluffy Martha Stewart recipe for marshmallow cream frosting, and I added mini chocolate chip morsels for decoration :)

Last but not least, I made...

EGGNOG CUPCAKES!!!

To be completely honest, I'm not a fan of eggnog. It's too thick, too sweet...just too much. I was skeptical about making these cupcakes, but who doesn't think about eggnog when Christmas is mentioned? These turned out to be AMAZING, which only proves that things are always better in cupcake form. The cake was light and fluffy, and paired very nicely with the just-sweet-enough frosting.

Oh yes, the frosting. The recipe calls for powdered sugar. 2 cups of it. I'm sure everyone knows by now that I don't like sugar overpowering my cupcakes, and as mentioned above, I already think eggnog is too sweet. While I understand that the sugar is meant to make the butter cream nice and thick, I also think that there are other ways to make your frosting nice and thick without sacrificing a couple of good, healthy teeth. I opted to put in cream cheese instead (yes, cream cheese saved the day once again!) and ended up with a very delicious frosting. I highly recommend that you steer clear of the sugar option and just add cream cheese until you get the right consistency :)

Okay, so there you have it! Those were the cupcakes that I decided to make for the holidays. School starts next week, so I think it's safe to say that I won't be baking again for awhile. Maybe I'll be inspired by something during the quarter, though...and maybe I'll end up coming back. In the mean time, I hope you all had a wonderful holiday! Best wishes for 2010, and happy baking! :D