First Steps

I have previously threatened to turn my kitchen into a cupcake factory...and this past weekend I took a few steps towards making that threat a reality.

The first step was making a batch of home-brew vanilla extract.

The second step was putting my oven into action by making a crap-ton (yes, you read that correctly, a crap-ton) of mini cupcakes.  I will admit that these cupcakes were not from scratch...the main reason being that it will be about another 75 days until my vanilla extract is ready.  Also, I was not able to find powered sugar for making frosting until just yesterday, but I digress...  Excuses aside, I think that I still made a wicked "from the box" cupcake.

can you smell them baking?? mmm.

Almost ready...

Do you hear what they are saying?  "Eat me, I'm yummy, and not fattening at all. I swear!"

Haha, yeah right.  These bad boys had an entire stick of butter in them, not to mention the icing.  They definitely are not the dieter's cupcake, even though they were bite-sized.

One of my friends told me my cupcakes were better than the ones he had at Magnolia's Bakery... he 1. obviously has not had a cupcake in quite awhile (we are seriously deprived over here) and 2. he must not have had the chocolate with dark chocolate icing, gave me a cupcake-gasm, one that I had when I was at Magnolia's in Dubai.

Anyway, so now I got this practice run of cupcakes out of the way... I am almost ready to let the cupcake factory production line begin.  I am having visions of myself at the end of some sort of belt shoving mini cupcakes into my mouth "I Love Lucy" style.  Awesome.