Thursday Things

1. I find it so funny when recipes are labeled as “Muffins with Frosting.” Umm…that’s called a cupcake. I totally encourage understand the desire to eat cake for breakfast. I also understand the guilt associated with doing that (except coffee cake, that’s totally healthy breakfast fare), but let’s call a spade a spade. Muffin + frosting = cupcake (<-- and who says I’m bad at math!).
2. While we’re talking about cupcakes, I am SO excited to say that I am going to enter a cupcake competition later this month! It’s a haunted cupcake competition – how festive and fitting! When I made the decision the other day I was so distracted by thoughts of frosting that I didn’t take the most detailed notes in class.
3. Clearly I need to start baking and testing recipes if I am going to come up with a winner in the next few weeks!
4. Can we talk about the weather right now? Ridiculous! I have sweaters and boots going unused in my closet. And one of my favorite summer dresses just broke – most likely from exhaustion. Sadness.
5. I finally did it. I got a Pinterest account. And now all I want to do is pin! All pinning all the time! But you wouldn’t know that by the looks of my boards. I have a bit of pinning anxiety. I don’t want to show everyone how uncool I am overwhelm people by the sheer magnitude of my pins.
6. Something that overwhelms me? Working with yeast. It is such a fickle friend. I used it a few times over the summer with success, but I am even more hesitant about trying it out at school. But I desperately want to make pumpkin pull-apart bread. Decisions, decisions.
7. All this talk about cupcakes makes me want one. Guess a picture will have to do!

Look for a post about this cupcake and others over at the Chicago Chronicles page! I am working on a new post as we speak.

Pumpkin Spice Snickerdoodles

I wanted to post these cookies on Saturday. I wanted them to herald in the start of October. To celebrate fall, finally. But my head and my heart just weren’t in it (but my hands were in a bag of Salted Caramel Popcorn). I was busy feeling sorry for myself; thinking that because I was happy doing what everyone else wasn’t I was somehow missing out. I was missing the point.

Bittersweet Salted Caramel Corn

I am not the typical college kid. I go to bed early (before midnight, *gasp*), and wake up even earlier. I get freaked out when I don’t do my homework – and make study schedules every week so that doesn’t happen.

Most peculiarly though, at least at my school, is that I use the kitchen. A lot. Once a day, if not more, I am in there. And not just for making tea or heating up easy mac or rinsing off a disposable fork that came with my takeout (<-- people do that).

When I am stressed, happy, excited, or hungry my first instinct is to head to the kitchen. I want to put my feelings into food. And so, I haul my big box of food and all my pots and pans and utensils into the kitchen and get to work. People come and poke their heads in and say, “What smells so good?” “Wow, you’re baking something, that’s so impressive.” “Hey, can I have some?” Then they get their Ramen, and mosey on their way to do what “real” college kids do.