Hello, all!
Well, I got some sad news today. In checking on the cupcakes I said I'd bring for the Hospitality Suite at the Desert Dreams Writers' Conference this April (again, click here for more information about what's sure to be an awesome conference - okay, plug done), I learned that everything brought must be store-bought. I had feared this may be the case, which is why I checked now rather than going through weeks of taste-testing only to be disappointed later and/or to bring a bunch of homemade cupcakes to the conference only to learn that they couldn't be used and would likely have to be thrown in the trash. (Seriously, that would've broken my heart.)
However! I decided I'm still going to go through what I've dubbed the "prep work" (a.k.a. the weeks of taste-testing) because, well, I'm excited by the prospect. And because my husband's co-workers have been asking if I'm going to be sending them more treats soon and becoming dejected when they hear "she's taking a break." Plus, I'd finally figured out all eight flavors for the different subgenres. Don't want to waste all that valuable thinkin' time!
Here's where I stand: I will make one subgenre cupcake per week for the next eight weeks. (The weeks leading up to the conference, which is April 27th-29th for those of you who didn't click on the link either time.) Now, I have a few different recipes to try for some cupcake ideas - basically just variations on the same thing - so the plan is to do them all within the week dedicated to that subgenre. Most likely all at once, and I'll just halve or quarter each recipe.
So, yeah, that's the plan. Recipes for Week One (i.e., this week, even though I've already lost a couple days) will be posted by Saturday night. Be on the lookout!
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
MIA...
Okay, I’ve been MIA for a while. But I haven’t been a total slacker. Nope, I made heart-shaped sugar cookies for Valentine’s Day and oatmeal chocolate chip ones just this past week!
For the sugar cookies, I used Alton Brown's recipe. It's more shortbread-like than traditional sugar cookies, but the extra butter means they're extra good and they're also ideal for using cookie cutters.
For the oatmeal cookies, I used an allrecipes.com recipe, which can be found here. I omitted the walnuts and used Hershey's Special Dark chocolate chips rather than regular semi-sweet ones. I was going to try some with milk chocolate chips and peanut butter chips, but . . . I got distracted by the fact that my cookies were not coming off the pan cleanly. I use a Silpat (which is a silicone baking mat - looks like this - that's reusable so that I don't need parchment paper), so I've never had this problem before. Specifically, the bottoms were getting caught on my spatula, which was causing dragging and kind of tearing apart the bottoms of my cookies. Now, they weren't destroyed, you couldn't even tell most of them were messed up in any way, but I knew. And that bothered me. (You might've picked up by now that I'm a bit of a perfectionist.)
Now, onto my new and exciting adventure!
I will be attending the Desert Dreams Writers' Conference this April. (For anyone interested in learning more about this conference, click here.) This will be the first writers' conference I've ever attended, so to say I'm excited (while also being freaked out of my mind) would be an understatement. I've also volunteered to bring cupcakes for the Hospitality Room because I was looking for a chance to get involved, and this let me do that while indulging my love of baking. However, I realized today that there will be about 250 people just attending the conference, not including the program presenters, editors, and agents. So, in other words, I need to make about 300-400 cupcakes.
I was already planning on making mini cupcakes, so that's helpful since it means my batter will go further. But then I thought, "What kind of cupcakes? Just one? More than one? How many flavors are too many? (Is that even possible?) What limits are mini cupcakes going to put on me (with fillings and whatnot)?" So I have about two months to figure this all out, to try recipes and figure out what works and what doesn't. You know what that means, right? Right! I'll be taking all of you along on my Taste Test Train!
There are some decisions I've already made, so I'll let you in on those now. First, there will be more than one flavor! (Honestly, could you see me doing only one?) Second, since this is a conference put on by a chapter of the Romance Writers of America, the flavors will correspond with subgenres of the romance genre as a whole. What this means is that I'll already have a starting point for the types of recipes I'll be making. For example, paranormal romance gets dark chocolate because (a lot of) it deals with things that go bump in the night, like vampires; sweet traditionals will get vanilla because, well, the name says it all on that one.
So that's where I am. I welcome any and all suggestions for categories. The categories, just FYI, are as follows: paranormal, sweet traditionals/historical, inspirational (I'm thinking something involving angel food cake?), romantic suspense, Regency (Regency deals with a specific time period - early 1800s Britain - so lemon is my current plan), contemporary, and young adult. Are you excited? I hope so, because I am!
Addendum: I forgot to include erotic romance on the list! They'll be red velvet. :)
For the sugar cookies, I used Alton Brown's recipe. It's more shortbread-like than traditional sugar cookies, but the extra butter means they're extra good and they're also ideal for using cookie cutters.
For the oatmeal cookies, I used an allrecipes.com recipe, which can be found here. I omitted the walnuts and used Hershey's Special Dark chocolate chips rather than regular semi-sweet ones. I was going to try some with milk chocolate chips and peanut butter chips, but . . . I got distracted by the fact that my cookies were not coming off the pan cleanly. I use a Silpat (which is a silicone baking mat - looks like this - that's reusable so that I don't need parchment paper), so I've never had this problem before. Specifically, the bottoms were getting caught on my spatula, which was causing dragging and kind of tearing apart the bottoms of my cookies. Now, they weren't destroyed, you couldn't even tell most of them were messed up in any way, but I knew. And that bothered me. (You might've picked up by now that I'm a bit of a perfectionist.)
Now, onto my new and exciting adventure!
I will be attending the Desert Dreams Writers' Conference this April. (For anyone interested in learning more about this conference, click here.) This will be the first writers' conference I've ever attended, so to say I'm excited (while also being freaked out of my mind) would be an understatement. I've also volunteered to bring cupcakes for the Hospitality Room because I was looking for a chance to get involved, and this let me do that while indulging my love of baking. However, I realized today that there will be about 250 people just attending the conference, not including the program presenters, editors, and agents. So, in other words, I need to make about 300-400 cupcakes.
I was already planning on making mini cupcakes, so that's helpful since it means my batter will go further. But then I thought, "What kind of cupcakes? Just one? More than one? How many flavors are too many? (Is that even possible?) What limits are mini cupcakes going to put on me (with fillings and whatnot)?" So I have about two months to figure this all out, to try recipes and figure out what works and what doesn't. You know what that means, right? Right! I'll be taking all of you along on my Taste Test Train!
There are some decisions I've already made, so I'll let you in on those now. First, there will be more than one flavor! (Honestly, could you see me doing only one?) Second, since this is a conference put on by a chapter of the Romance Writers of America, the flavors will correspond with subgenres of the romance genre as a whole. What this means is that I'll already have a starting point for the types of recipes I'll be making. For example, paranormal romance gets dark chocolate because (a lot of) it deals with things that go bump in the night, like vampires; sweet traditionals will get vanilla because, well, the name says it all on that one.
So that's where I am. I welcome any and all suggestions for categories. The categories, just FYI, are as follows: paranormal, sweet traditionals/historical, inspirational (I'm thinking something involving angel food cake?), romantic suspense, Regency (Regency deals with a specific time period - early 1800s Britain - so lemon is my current plan), contemporary, and young adult. Are you excited? I hope so, because I am!
Addendum: I forgot to include erotic romance on the list! They'll be red velvet. :)
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