Oven Luvin'

Things my real* size oven, my kitchenaid mixer, and about 9 million sticks of butter and I created this week:

4 dozen sugar cookies with three different colors of vanilla butter cream frosting
3 dozen standard chocolate cupcakes with Joe-Joe (see post below) butter cream frosting
2 dozen mini cupcakes with coconut butter cream frosting
1.8 dozen (I know that's not a real number, but we had some casualties-- I'm pretty sure I was halfway to creating a WMD with some of my caramel experiments) caramel-dipped pretzel rods rolled in nuts and drizzled with chocolate

... and a partridge in a pear tree...

Aaanyway, it was a big baking week. And I am not going to fess up to how much of the above I actually ended up consuming myself. But it was a little scary how easily those "oops-broken" pretzel rods just flew into my mouth. My favorite part is the frosting making because as I pour obscene amounts of powdered sugar into the mixer bowl full of butter these little puffs of it shoot out like tiny white fireworks and the whole kitchen (and Steve, my plant in the corner) ends up covered in this thin layer of kamikaze powdered sugar dust. It's awesome.

Tomorrow I will make cupcakes again for Friday's holiday party at work... saving some, of course, for the visiting family who I'm slowly converting to the joys of cupcake addiction. Then the oven will get a little rest. And the power bill will, too, I hope.

*as opposed to my New York-size oven, which was just a microwave with an ego, really