So I’ve been a little obsessed with these cupcakes ever since I saw them on Cakewrecks Sunday Sweets.

I’ve wanted to learn how to use fondant for a long time, and these looked like they might be an easy way to start. You don’t have to drape a whole big cake with one giant sheet of it, to begin with, and it looks like the shapes are fairly simple cutouts. But I procrastinate. I look at pictures and make plans and don’t do anything. I couldn’t afford the most recent cupcake class at Kitchen Conservatory. Damn my expensive teeth. Class with Stephanie of The Cupcake Project would have been so much better than a (still-aching) mouth full of Novocaine and goo. So I just moped for awhile.

Then E and I decided that in the interest of saving money, we weren’t going to do Valentine’s gifts this year. Maybe just dinner.

THEN they took the Pac-Man game out of one of our local bar haunts and replaced it with Big Buck Hunter, of all things. He was devastated.

So I hit the interwebs. “What’s Cooking, America?” has a recipe for marshmallow fondant, touted as a good learning tool for beginners. And tasty, too! Who doesn’t like marshmallows?

I do not like marshmallows.

Sticky, icky MESS. I was slathered up to the elbows in Crisco before I could get the stuff into a workable ball. Crisco, by the way, will make you drop everything you touch. I know this sounds obvious, but when you are covered in lard and you try to pick up a marble rolling pin, it WILL fall. On your foot. And when you try to pick up your Bud Light to wash away the pain in your foot, it WILL spill. On two of your cooling cupcakes.

But it got kind of fun – coloring the mix, adding chocolate to half of it, etc. I used a cookie cutter to make the chocolate slices to sit on top of the (strawberry cake, whipped-cream-filled) cupcakes, and that went over pretty easily. Black food coloring just sounded awful, so I mixed in some cocoa powder and chocolate bricks when I was heating the mixture. Worked like a dream and gave the mix a great dark color. Cutting all of those pieces, however, proved to be a problem.

Marshmallows, even in this recipe, do not cut very well, especially when you want to cut them into small shapes. I don’t know if I did something wrong or if it is just the nature of the marshmallow, but it is inclined to poof. I could not, no matter how hard I tried, get the crisp, clean edges of a traditional fondant. I ended up taking chunks of the mix and rolling out the shapes by hand, molding them and adding details with toothpicks as probes. It took me an hour, but here’s the result:

It’s not a great picture and the flash makes it hard to see the awesomeness of the colors I used on the little ghosts. Those ghosts, by the way, ROCKED. They had little chocolate dabs for the eyeballs. And of course, this selection features both Mr. and Ms. Pac-Man, sharing their love in the middle with a marshmallow heart.

E was ECSTATIC. He took the pan around to show his friends and his family and they were wowed with my domestic goddess skills. Since it was comprised mainly of straight sugar and lard, the fondant wasn’t especially tasty – although it outruns traditional fondant by a mile. So I included a jar of dark chocolate frosting with the cupcake delivery. The fondant peels right off and we put frosting on the cupcakes as we ate them. It was maximum Frosting Freshness!

I think I’ll try traditional fondant soon… this marshmallow recipe was a good starter, I think. And anything that makes his nuts family think I might be acceptable wife material is a perk.

E’s buddy Archie is the executive chef at a Very Nice Restaurant in Chicago. One of the managers of the Very Nice Restaurant is going to be opening a new branch of Very Nice Restaurant in one of the Very Nice Casinos in Las Vegas, and he has asked Archie to help open it and be the executive chef there. Archie and his wife say they are about 90% sure they’re going to take the offer – the money is better and the cost of living is lower in Vegas, and they figure that they could at least try it for a year or two and build up some savings, then come back to Chicago if they don’t like it out west.

Good deal for Archie, yes?

Archie told E that he’ll need a right-hand man to do this thing, and that’s a right-hand man who would get paid half again over what E makes now. That is some niiice money. E is tempted – and he wants me to go with him.

Sometimes it seems like things are kind of drying up for us in St. Louis. My job is okay, his job is okay. We’re stable enough, really. But our best friends are all splintering off and doing different things, moving away, moving on. E’s best friend here is moving to South Carolina in the summer and taking his girlfriend – one of my good friends – with him. It feels like things are happening somewhere and we’re missing out. Friends move and circles change, and maybe we shouldn’t be standing still. As E and I approach thirty, we’ve been looking forward and back and what we’ve done, haven’t done, and want to do. We talk about getting married and probably having a kid sometime in the future, but that’s not in the immediate plan. We want to have an adventure, and maybe an opportunity like this coming at this point in our lives is what we need. Maybe we need to blow this town for a couple of years.

There are a lot of what-ifs and whatnots. Archie might not take the job after all, and the whole scenario would be moot. The guy starting the restaurant could get worried about the state of the economy and bail out on his plans. If we go, I’d have to sell my house. E would have to support us both out there till I could get a job. We’d have to give our parents “The Talk” in which we inform them that not only are we moving, we’re moving in together. That’s a baddie on both counts for both of our families, so we’re not even bringing it up until we decide. Or we might just straight up freak out and decided not to go because we are big chickens. We wouldn’t be alone – Archie and his wife would be there with us, obviously – but it’s still scary as shiz and so exciting at the same time. No income tax, no humidity, houses that look like overgrown Taco Bells, nearby mountains, good golf, cheap airfare deals every weekend. And no family, no safety net, no toasted ravioli, no Provel cheese (well, HE wouldn’t miss that), and a significant increase in the moisturizer budget.

It’s huge. It’s crazy. I soooo want to do it. Today, anyway.

The timeline is such that we wouldn’t move till late summer or early fall – I think the Very Nice Restaurant is slated to open in October – so that means won’t have to decide until July or so. Neither of us have even been to Las Vegas before, so I think that once Archie tells us his decision, we’ll make a little reconnaissance trip if he says he and his wife are going.

Then it’s up to us.

I totally told myself that I’d do NaBloPoMo in November. I blogged a lot in October and I thought “Self, this is the month you can do it!” But I pretty much just slept for the last two days. Today I did talk myself out of bed to go to work, only to find out that my big-ass project that’s set to run all of next week may or may not have been canceled by The Powers That Be, but no one can give me an answer. Don’t mind me, I’m just the team lead. I did write a cover letter and send a resume in for a job posting that looked appealing, so the day wasn’t a total wash.

Still.

November is also National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), you know… that’s where NaBloPoMo came from, actually. Very few people actually signed on to write a whole novel in a month, so the everyday blog was born. Maybe I could still write a novel. I have 17 pages already. That’s two chapters. One of them sucks, really, so it’s more like I have 1 chapter and 9 pages, and 8 coasters.

Everything I haven’t done is annoying me and making me want to go to bed.

In real news, I saw the doc today and got myself some antidepressants. This month it’s Cymbalta. I haven’t been on an A-D for about half a year now – usually it’s just my trusty mood stabilizers – but Doc is beginning to think I might have some sort of mild Seasonal Affective Disorder, and I am inclined to agree. This tends to happen in the winter. And really, aside from my job suckage situation, things are going pretty well and I have very little to be depressed about. If you have never been clinically depressed, then you do not know this and let me tell you – the most depressing thing about being depressed is the fact that you often have little or nothing to be depressed about.

And when you go hypomanic like I do sometimes, you have EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD to be manic about. Whee! And you can write and write and read and play and work and do everything for a million hours and not sleep because your brain is on on on and you barely even eat because there is so much to do and think about and you write AWFUL long and conjunction-packed sentences like this one!

That, in a nutshell, is a Type 2 Bipolar Disorder.

All right. I’ve recovered from the embarrassment of the Baking Fail on Sunday and now I can crawl out of my hole and share a little Baking Success.

Had to slice a MILLION apples.

The recipe called for 10 freaking pounds of sliced apples. Right. I got to about 5 pounds and the pie was stuffed. Evil lying recipe.

Then I rolled out the top crust and magically didn’t tear it (too much) while putting it on the pie. I don’t know if it shows well enough in the picture, but I put B <3 E on there. And if you look at the burner on the far left of the picture, you’ll see the remnants of The Great Cider Mess of Sunday night.

Aww, how cute did I make this?

Stuck the pie in the oven and set the timer for two hours. Time to finish the cupcakes!

Front left corner: my secret shame

Yep. That’s a tub of Betty Crocker icing. The made-from-scratch cinnamon cream-cheese icing just scared me a little too much after the Cider Fail and in my fear I bought a can of buttercream. But I topped the icing with cinnamon and sugar…

Nom nom nom!

And they are SO GOOD. The cake was moist and sweet (and still is three days after baking) and the buttercream icing actually complements the flavor, making it more cupcakey and less like a muffin. Of course, this has not stopped me from eating them for breakfast.

A made-from-scratch pie crust, made-from-scratch cupcakes and a million fresh apples? Check out your baker friend with the mad skillz over here.

Cupcake pajamas and cupcakes for breakfast... this turned out all right after all.

Apple pie - I'm doin it rite.

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Apple cupcake recipe at Epicurious is here.

Apple pie recipe at Epicurious is here.

And apple cider cream cheese icing (my Epic Fail) is here. Don’t go do your live blog in the other room when the cider is boiling – just a tip from me to you.

Happy baking!

This is my first-ever attempt at live blogging. Today I am going to be a baker! My mom and I went to the orchard today and I have 10 pounds of apples and some recipes from Epicurious, and I am determined to make a pie (for E) and cupcakes (for me) this afternoon.

Let’s see how this goes.

3:37 pm, CST: This SHOULD be everything I need for both recipes.

First step, pie crust.

4:01 pm, CST: Dough is prepped and ready to go in the fridge.

Next step, start cupcake batter.

4:02 pm, CST. Realize I do not have eggs or baking soda. Shit.

4:03 pm, CST. Am going down the block to Mel’s house for eggs and baking soda. God bless her and send her cupcakes.

4:18 pm: Returned. Melissa will be stopping by to pick up her cupcakes before work. Now, cupcake batter.

4:54 pm: Muffins are ready to go in the oven!

4:57 pm: Cupcake batter is SOOO yummy! Observation – apple slicing is difficult when you are a klutz and afraid of your own paring knife. Cupcakes are in for 18-20 minutes.

5:18 pm: Cupcakes are not “springy to touch.” I’m leaving them in longer… damn this 1970s oven. At least I got all the dishes cleaned up so far. Now am just dreading slicing ten effing cups of apples for pie.

5:24 pm: Cupcakes are springy! Removed from the oven. I do NOT want to slice those apples. I think I’m going to nap till the cupcakes cool, then make the cinnamon-cream-cheese frosting, THEN finish the pie. Good plan!

6:58 pm: Up from nap, leave for Target to buy apple slicer thing.

7:55 pm: Return from Target with apple slicer, peeler, and new pair of Converse One Star sneaks in black suede. Yeah.

7:59 pm: Time to make cinnamon cream cheese frosting and slice some apples!

8:07 pm: Dropped chunk of cream cheese in cat’s bowl. Sliced off the kibbly part and it’s okay now.

8:13 pm: While typing that last line, cider boiled over and I have no more. Huge mess. No cider reduction. EFF.

8:25 pm: Still cleaning up cider from stove. Frosting is unrescuable. Eff eff eff.

8:49 pm: Completely EPIC FAIL. Started slicing up apples, got three done, and realized am out of sugar. Used it all on Frosting Fail. Now I cannot make pie filling tonight and sliced apple will go brown. I declare Baking Fail for today.

Runny frosting and apples that will go brown tonight. Send in the Fail Boat!

Tomorrow I will buy more sugar and more stuff for cream cheese frosting and I’ll get it right. Sigh. Is this a sign that I should not be a baker, or a sign that I should just make a better grocery list, have backups, and not leave anything boiling?