ONE INGREDIENT ICE-CREAM!

So, a long time ago, I was like "Here's how to make five-minute ice-cream!"

What a fool I was. 

Little did I know that there was a way to make ice-cream WITH ONE INGREDIENT. It takes a little bit longer than five minutes, but only because you have to freeze something. Otherwise, it's dead easy. 

What's that magic ingredient to make magical easy ice-cream? It's banana. 

You know how sometimes you can some bananas lying around and they're going a bit brown and you're like "Hey, I should make banana bread" and then you do? Well, I loves me some banana bread. But roomie suggested that instead of banana bread, I could make banana ice-cream. And I was like, "That sounds hard." 

Nope. (Thanks to thekitchn.com).

Here's what you do.
 
Peel and chop the banana. 

Banana carnage!

Freeze them for 1-2 hours. 

Put me in the freezer!

Baby Don't You Cry -- Gonna Make a Pie

So, lately I've been feeling stressed. Nothing urgent or terrible: just lots of stuff to do, phone calls unreturned, etc. 


And so I made a pie. 


I both love baking, and am sort of self-dramatizing, and this is one of my favorite movies: 





So it's impossible to make a pie without getting this song in my head: 





And if you want some poignancy to your evening, check out a little about actor/director Adrienne Shelly. 


But you know what else I love beside pie? Rice pudding. 


Oh, rice pudding. 

Holiday Party So Late Holidays So Over

It's time for another installment of Laura Takes Pictures of Stuff, Does Not Post Them for a Long Time! 

Back in the holidays, me n' the roomie had a Holiday Party. The theme was, bring any weird food or drink that your family always makes around the Holidays. Like, is there a certain jello salad your grandma always makes? Bring it! 

Before the party, I got a few anxious queries about what constituted "weird." Like, what if the offering was not weird enough? To which the answer was, anything is welcome! Weird and non-weird alike. 

We went shopping for decorations at the dollar store and fortunately we did not get too carried away:

There was lots to enjoy at the dollar store, including The Worst Holiday Ornament of All Time:

Meagan-y Meagan Eats!

So tonight I was determined to cook with ingredients we actually had in the house (as opposed to my usual "I can totally make this! I have all the ingredients...oh. I guess I need to go out and get star anise. And shitake mushrooms. And bok choy.  But other than that, I can totally just whip it together. Right after I figure out how to use the food processor. Oh, and coriander seeds. Need those too. Will ground coriander do? Man." (At this point, I go out to the store for the first of several trips I will make that evening).


So because we had some avocados, I made guacamole with this recipe. 
I followed the recipe exactly, 'cept I didn't use the entire half onion. No matter how finely I diced the onions, I didn't want the gauc to get onion-overwhelm and I wasn't going to take on the Herculean task of putting the food processor together. (SHUT UP I HAVE POOR SPATIAL REASONING SKILLS IT'S MEAN TO LAUGH AT DISABLED PEOPLE). So I used about a quarter of the onion. 

The recipe says to leave the gauc out for an hour, which I side-eyed. Wouldn't it go brown? Luckily, my roommate has evolved and accurate opinions about how to cover guacamole with cling-wrap, so it worked out. 


Basically, the technique involves making sure the cling-wrap is down OVER the guacamole. Allow me to demonstrate with the guac leftovers:

Just try to get in, oxygen. I fucking dare you.

Anyway, my roomie put on some brown rice in her rice-maker/vegetable steamer (no, I don't know how to use that, either. I SAID SHUT IT), and I heated the rest of the onion in a pot with some olive oil for five minutes, added some garlic, and heated two cans of black beans (using about half a cup of the bean broth) with lots of cumin, salt, pepper, lemon-pepper, and a little cayenne (also about five minutes).


Put rice, beans, and guacamole together with some salsa and what do you have? You basically have a bean bowl from Chipotle! Okay, it's also a staple meal from many cultures. But forgive me if my point of reference is a Chipotle bean bowl. 


My roomie was out when the food was all ready, so I ate before her. When I heard her come in, I waited for a few minutes, then snuck into the kitchen to manipulate a compliment out of her:

"This is so good!" she said, upon seeing me.


"I know," I said, humbly, then added: "When I was eating it, I thought it was almost as good a Chipotle bean bowl."


"I think it's better," she said. 


"I DO TOO!" I shrieked. "I JUST DIDN'T WANT TO SAY THAT FIRST!" 


I really was proud, you guys. Okay, so I used a recipe for a guacamole. (Um, it's also possible that back in the day I looked at this as a guide for making rice and beans. SHUT IT). And I didn't exactly think up the idea for a meal of rice, beans, and guacamole by myself. But...but...I didn't have to do extra shopping! And it was really easy! And it was really good! The recipe for guacamole is especially a keeper. 


So it spurred me to share some more of my vegan cooking of late. 

I didn't take pictures of tonight's meal, as I seem to have fallen out of the habit of obsessively photographing everything I cook. Maybe...because...I cook...more regularly...? So it's not as epic of an event? Or maybe because I'm not so great at photographing food and it never looks as good in the pictures as I want it to? 


But, anywhoodle, I've got a backlog of vegan recipes. As I've shared before, I'm currently a meagan, so I can go out and enjoy a burger every once in a while, but I cook vegan when I cook. 

Cooking vegan, I've decided, is awesome. Mexican food, particularly, is a bit of a revelation. 

The Nervous Chef Nervously Returns: She's a Meagan!

I wrote today on Hello Giggles about my waffling about secondhand fur and the issues therein. I mentioned my going-back-and-forth on the issue of eating meat, which I have only recently begun to cook with.

However, after becoming a vegetarian recidivist, I moved in with a vegan. So, at home, I mostly cook vegan and eat vegan. Thus, no sooner did my lifestyle start to shift towards cooking meat then it did a double-back to the consideration of veganism. 

Basically, I now consider myself to be a lucky, lucky cheater. I get the benefits of a vegan lifestlye -- a big chunk of what I consume and pretty much everything I cook is vegan (as well as mostly preservative and chemical-free, which is my vegan roomie's main concern), BUT I never took a vow of NEVER EVER WILL I EVER AGAIN EAT MEAT, FISH, OR DAIRY. And as I've discussed, it's the putting a food item totally "off-limits" that messes with my eating-disorder-inclined brain. So I can still eat meat, fish, or dairy as a treat when out of the house, but I eat mostly vegan most of the time. I get the best of both worlds. 

So now I'm a meagan -- a vegan that eats meat. I spend a great deal of my time considering vegan ways to cook, including making a vegan Rice Krispie Snowman for Christmas: 

Those are vegan jello shots, too. Seriously!

Edible Portmanteau

I have a strange fondness for "foods that shouldn't be"; last Thanksgiving, I was all delighted because my parents made a Turducken. A friend of the family ate Thanksgiving with us and afterwards sent me and my mom a link to an article about the Turducken of desserts: the Cherpumple.

"That sounds disgusting," my mom wrote back.

"Disgustingly awesome!" I countered.

So I've wanted to make a Cherpumple ever since.

A Cherpumple is:

Cherry pie baked in white cake 

on top of an

Pumpkin pie baked in yellow cake

on top of an

Apple pie baked in spice cake. 

Frosted all over with cream cheese frosting.

This Thanksgiving, I was invited to a big potluck and I am totally on picking up my dishes that I totally left there sorry about that. and I figured this was the ideal moment: if it was a weird disaster, there'd be other desserts; people could laugh about the cherpumple and still eat real pumpkin pie.

So: first you bake a pumpkin pie, apple pie, and cherry pie.

Birthday things!

So this is most definitely an edition of "really old pictures of food" since my birthday was back in early September. How old did I turn? Well, the lady at the grocery story today said, "You an old lady! I thought you were so much younger!" when looking at my I.D. So I hope that answers your question. [Side note: I think people just forget that late twenties looks a lot like mid twenties? Your face doesn't collapse right before your thirtieth birthday. I dunno -- I've just been getting a lot of that "YOU LOOK SO YOUNG" recently and while I'd like to think it's my excellent skin care regime, I don't think so...I've always looked pretty much the age I am. I think people just expect my age to look different, or something? Or maybe I just lack gravitas? I'm also a teacher -- a pseudo-college-professor of sorts -- and I don't think that helps. People expect college professors to look old, I guess? I was clearing out my classroom the other day while another class entered and a student said, 'Are you the teacher?...I mean, did you just get out of undergrad or something? I'm sorry, you just look so young' and then when I told him my actual age HE LOOKED EMBARRASSED. However, the ultimate cluster of age awkwardness occurred when my orthodontist's assistant figured out I taught at the same college her daughter attended -- the struggle to reconcile the fact that the surly often-late-for-appointments girl who didn't wear her retainer was responsible for teaching her offspring played out in beautiful conflict across her face. Yes, adults get orthodontia, too. Suck it.]

Anywhoodle, what was I talking about? Oh, yes, how mature I am. I decided to have a birthday party and invite a motley, multi-generational crew, most of whom showed up, which was was awesome. I decided that the theme for my birthday would be "Laura's Blue and White Wonder bread Birthday." I was asked what a "blue and white" party was, and I replied that those are my favorite colors. Nothing more complicated than that. I also decided to make recipes from this book. Why? Because it exists, that's why. 

For the record

So, I've solicited YOUSE GUYS opinions on what my next blog post should be. Here's what I can gather about what folks seems interested in, so far:

Here are the most popular posts, in order of popularity. Unsurprisingly, the post Pamela Ribon tweeted comes in at a clear number one. The others are a little more puzzling.

Really Old Pictures of Food: How in the Who and the What Now?

Someone sent me this article about "how and why" photos of food are shared online. Probably because I eagerly snap photos of anything I come close to "making."

The upshot seems to be that most photos of food come from:

Keeping a Food Diary: 25% this lends itself to the self-tracking trend we have covered before.
Documenting the Process of Cooking: Driven by the motivation to show their creation, 22% of food photography is people self-documenting their proud foodie creation.

ETA: All this talk of food-documenting reminded me of Food Junta, which is currently under construction but a great source--in contrast to me--of professionally-presented foodie documentation. Although it is not food, I do need to make this when I get back to Arizona, because we have actual rattlesnakes there.

Self-Documenting My Proud Foodie Creation

I try to draw. I put icing inside things.

I told you I'd give you some advice on how to put icing inside of cupcakes! I even made helpful drawings.

I'd like to say upfront this is totally ripped off from, er, inspired by, Hyperbole and a Half, the Old Skewl posts. But she says right here in her FAQs:

If I draw picture with MS Paint on my blog, will you think I'm copying you?

Probably not. Unless you steal my work directly or redraw/rewrite my stuff, you are good to go. I love that more people are getting interested in adding artwork to their blogs!

I even used Paintbrush (JUST LIKE HER CREEPY STARS IN EYES).

Here are some NFAQs (Not Frequently Asked Questions):

How did you get your handwriting to be so ironically and hilariously bad?

I didn't. That's just what my handwriting looks like.

But it looks like a mentally deficient five-year-old chicken wrote that stuff.

I know.

How do you function in the real world with handwriting as profoundly terribly as that?

By avoiding writing by hand whenever possible. Occasionally, I have to fill in a form by hand and people laugh at me.

Will you make me cupcakes?

No. No after you just insulted my handwriting.

First things first: I want to share what inspired my to put icing inside of cupcakes in the first place.

In the magazine section of Barnes and Noble, I saw this:

Leaving aside the sheer awesome of a magazine devoted to breakfast, let's look closely on all the various awesomeness going on in this picture:

French Toast Chocolate Sandwiches! With Bacon! And a random berry! (to keep it healthy)! For dinner!

Blogger eats things! And they are not as delicious as my cupcakes.

So, my last post (a biting analysis of Cee-Lo vs. Fifty Cent) wasn't here when I checked my blog this morning. I was told that the page "didn't exist." Now it is back. I don't understand this at all, but I'm happy to go with it. Well, not "happy to go with it." "Too lazy to investigate and/or fix and happy that for once strategy of doing nothing worked out."

Since a fairly continuous stream of people seem to find my blog through googling the phrase, "How to put icing inside of cupcakes" or "how to frost big cupcakes" (because of this post), I'd like to say that 1) I made cupcakes and put icing inside of them today! 2) Too busy to post a how-to post right now, but I will; 3) This picture probably reveals how the procedure was done but, don't worry, I'll walk you through it later, anyway:

I have icing inside of me!

Oh, and the ads on the side of my blog are now pimping for a Cabbage Soup Diet. Which was apparently popular back in the day and is eerily similar to the Magical Leek Soup. Further proof that the Magical Leek Soup is a freaking crash diet.

New Celebrity Endorses Leek-y Cauldron Diet

My heart can't take this, you guys.

Pamie (Pamela Ribon) commented on my blog. She tweeted the fug girls about me, who tweeted her back. She's following Yogurt on Tumblr (I said I'd get that link in every time).

Because everyone knows that the best way to express love is through money, I'm buying this right away. And then this.

So, to recap, not only has all this happened, but: Jennifer Egan is friends with me on facebook. I also know someone who knows someone who is her cousin.

I know someone who knows someone in The Decemberists.

I know someone who knows someone who knows Richard Siken.

Please don't act like you're not impressed. You're just embarrassing yourself.

Oh, and if that weren't enough, you know that roller derby I went to? I went with her and him. Yeah, that's right. ROLLER DERBY.

So now that I'm a celebrity, you're going to have start treating me accordingly.

But being a celebrity comes with certain responsibilities, such as looking your best. So I thought I'd share some tips.

First of all, no one goes on diets anymore. Diets are bad; we're supposed to enjoy and savor food. Like the Europeans do. I'm technically half-European, but I'm half-British and, for complicated historical reasons, people don't treat you as a gastronomical expert if you're British. When you try to serve them delicious things like marmite on toast, they get all squirrel-ly with you. (Sigh -- you Yanks. Marmite is delicious, y'all).

But if you're French, people listen to what you have to say about food, which is where this comes in. It's not a "diet" you see -- it's a commitment to wellness and savoring food and making things that taste good and are good for you. I made this in the past from her website, and I liked it. And in the process, I discovered this: the leek soup kick-off weekend.

So, you make this soup out of leeks (called "the magical leek soup") and you live on it for a weekend:

Leeks are a mild diuretic, and 48 hours or so of leek soup would provide immediate results to jump-start the recasting. For me, it was the start of a lifelong commitment to wellness as well as the beginning of my appreciation, my love, of leeks, about which there is much more to say. It is a trick I still use from time to time; do try it the first weekend.

But it's not a diet, y'all! Because it tastes delicious:

Both versions are so good, and an adventure for most palates, that you will have a very hard time seeing them as prison rations. Especially if these tastes are new to you, jot your impressions of flavor and fragrance in your journal. In time, this exercise will intensify your pleasures, and you may want to keep a regular diary of your experiences gastronomiques

Accidentally Racist Cupcake Arrangement?

The disadvantage to boasting about your fabu skillz/love for baking things is that sometimes you can get asked to bake things. Cupcakes were requested of me, meaning that there was a push-pull between narcissism and laziness:

Narcissism: I love praise and attention! It feels like love!

Laziness: But I'm so laaaaaazzzzzzy.

But desire to please won out, so I made cupcakes! And put them on my awesome stand. I realized afterwards that the way I had arranged them was inadvertently a little racist:

Why are the minority white cupcakes at the TOP of the stand, towering over the majority chocolate cupcakes? Am I trying to visually illustrate apartheid through baked goods?

In truth, I just had some leftover vanilla frosting to use up and made a new batch of chocolate.

Because I'm determined to become a complete cliche/caricature of myself, I made the cupcakes while listening to Lady Gaga. After complete indifference/annoyance when it came to "Born This Way" and general irritation at the Catholic guilt/spirituality/whatever-whatever she is going through right now, I am completely in love with "Judas." I'm gonna have to buy the album when it comes out, aren't I? Damnit, Gaga, I cannot afford this! I caved and bought Britney's Femme Fatale (which is awesome) but her dead eyes and catatonic dancing make me feel weird about it! I don't want another pop diva album that I have ambivalent feelings about right now, please.

Excuse me while I go listen to "Judas" one more time.

The Nervous Chef Eats Meat, Now. She Cooks One Thing With Meat. That's it.

When I was twelve years old, I announced to my parents that I wanted to tell them something. I genuinely--and I cannot stress this enough--had no idea what was going to come out of my mouth until I actually spoke the words.

"I want to be a vegetarian," I said.

Of course, lots of stuff had gone into this decision, beforehand, tho' semi-consciously. Seeing dead pigs gutted in butcher's shops. Getting grossed out by the lumps of fat--so vital and alive-looking!--in my salami (note: obviously high-quality salami, in retrospect). Reading things--albeit, twelve-year-old-level things--on environmentalism.

My parents, to their eternal credit, were totally on board. Fine, they said. Keep on eating fish, they said. We want you to have the protein.

My mother, though she is a virtue ethicist and radically opposed to utilitarianism, even gave me Peter Singer's book Animal Liberation. (Could there be greater evidence of maternal love?). *

*My mother would hate the fact that I am linking to wikipedia. Give me better links and I'll put them in, Mom.

Anyway, my non-meat-eating-but-fish-eating self was basically (for many, many years) an acutetarian.

Then, I had an extended spiritual/psychotic experience involving 1) The Phoenix airport; 2) Aunt Annie's pretzel dogs; 3) A Quiznos' roast beef sandwich; 4) A Minneapolis farmer's market; 5) A bratwurst.

I would explain, but I've already done so in person so many times I'm worried it's in danger of becoming one of Those Stories (you know, the ones you tell over and over, oblivious to how much they are boring the folks that have heard them already). So I'll skip that (for now) and say just that I eat meat these days.

I am a newbie to meat, though. After all, I didn't eat meat from age 12-27, pretty much. I find this awesome:

1) There are so many things I haven't tried! For example: a pork chop. I MAY have had a pork chop pre: age 12, but I'm not sure. For all intents and purposes, I'VE NEVER EATEN A PORK CHOP.

2) Awesome conversation starter at parties:

Me: DO YOU KNOW THIS IS THE FIRST PORK CHOP I'VE EVER HAD?

Person At Party: Um, what are you talking about?

Me: LET ME EXPLAIN.

New best friend forever!

3) Whole new range of tastes to explore! At this point, the sex metaphors start becoming obvious. To these comparisons, I say: yes! As someone raised in the "joyfully we lark about" religion, I was never raised to find sex particularly "forbidden." But, having decided at age twelve to becoming a vegetarian, I pretty much, inadvertently, created for myself a category of forbidden thing. Now I get why indulging in the forbidden thing is so freaking awesome. I kind of think eating meat is wrong, but I do it anyway! I never got all those Catholic novels about forbidden love, repentance, etc. BUT NOW I DO! Meat is WRONG. But I LOVE IT ANYWAY.

Anyway, my cooking habits haven't really caught up to my new eating habits. I can only make one thing with meat. Cooking-wise, meat sort of still scares me (OMG BLOOD! IT COULD HAVE GERMS!).

So this is the only thing I can confidently make. It's taken from this book, though changed in a few significant ways.

Yogurt and the Nervous Chef Bake With Leftovers

1. A Really Old Picture of Food.

A long, long time ago -- way back in January -- I visited Yogurt in New York and attended the Opera. Now it happened, as is it wont to, that Yogurt's household had some leftovers: some bananas going squishy and some cracked eggs that needed using up. Because I have Baking Pretensions, Yogurt asked my thoughts (note: this is usually a mistake, as it produces Nervousness, which makes me fuck up).

Well, the usual method of using up old bananas with banana bread was closed to us, because there was no raising agent in the household and the point of the exercise was to use only ingredients in the household. So what can you make with bananas and eggs that is not banana bread? I thought "Banana custard!" Which is nothing I've ever made--or possible eaten--before, but it seemed possible. So I googled (seriously, why does a GOOGLE site not recognize GOOGLED as a verb? Go away, red squiggly lines!) "Banana Custard" and selected the first recipe I found.

Well, we could do that!

There was no lime, so we used lemon. And for bread crumbs we used chocolate rugelach.

Distressingly, I was once again asked for my opinion (which made me nervous) about what the hell a "moderate oven" meant. I guessed 325 and was happy to see that other custard recipes backed me up.

The result wasn't that pretty: the loaf pan and chocolate bread kind of make it look like a lasagna gone wrong:

However, I thought it tasted pretty good! And I'm not even much of a custard girl! And my nervousness didn't make me entirely fuck up! So, if you've got leftover bananas and eggs and lots of chocolate rugelach and no flour or baking powder, this is a decent option.

2. The Whites of Your Eggs; Also, The Nervous Chef Fucks Up Again

I Got a Cupcake Stand and Made Cupcakes to Put On It

That is all! Ain't it purty?

I made big cupcakes and put frosting inside them

That is all:

Cupcakes

I don't really like cupcakes all that much. Really, I don't. (And for someone with a sweets obsession, that's saying something).

I've moved to New York twice in my life: once at age nine (Cathedral School of St. John the Divine! Holla!) and once at age 22. Neither time was a conspicuous success (read: conspicuous non-success. Conspicuous!).

But both experiences left a few indelible imprints. And at age 22, it was the Magnolia bakery, which made me fall in love with their cupcakes. Which I am fully aware is a cliché at this point, but I don't care, as I am not very cool.

I went to the Magnolia bakery with my friend Serena, who has an unearthly ability to find both cute British teashops and awesome bakeries in any place she lives, from the Midwest to the Northeast to the Southeast. We went and dutifully stood in line (this was 2004, pre the SNL digital short paean to the Magnolia bakery but after the Sex and the City mention). I got a box of cupcakes and followed Serena, zombie-like, to a little park in the West Village (I was not functioning at the tip-top of my mental capacities at the time. See: conspicuous non-success). And, oh man. Those cupcakes. So amazing. With none of the cloying sweetness of supermarket cupcakes. Delicate and amazing. I munched on a few and felt that maybe life was worth living after all.

"Hey Laura," said Serena. "Is Liv Tyler pregnant?"

"Yes," I answered.

I was at the time reading gossip magazines on the regular, as I'd buy them to read on the subway. Serena was aware of this.

"Then I think that's Liv Tyler," she said. And I turned around and, indeed, there was Liv Tyler.

It's a very random memory and full of every New York cliché groaner (cupcakes! celebrity sightings!) but it was a nice memory in the midst of a very bleak time, and I feel correspondingly affectionate about it. It was gentle moment: things were what they were supposed to be. The cupcakes that were so famous were actually good. Think that's Liz Tyler? It IS Liz Tyler. Life is simple!

And since then, I've made the Magnolia cupcakes whenever I can. I don't really like cupcakes. I like these cupcakes.

Here's the recipe, which I ganked from the Magnolia cookbook (which I gave to Serena at one point) and which is available online.

If you follow that link, you'll see that several comments complain bitterly that this is not the actual Magnolia bakery recipe (the texture is slightly off, etc.). To which I say: duh. Obviously. Also, you know that Santa Claus person your parents told you about when you were a kid? That was them. Why would the bakery make their secret public property?

But what's available is still a great recipe, and I recommend it. The texture in the icing is a bit off, a little grainy and little too sweet, but I think the recipe for the base is amazing and the icing is still good, it just may not look as pretty.

I made cupcakes for Fourth of July (making this another installment of Really Old Pictures of Food). I find that red food coloring never works out, however. Blue and white was fine, but the red just looked like sludgy pink, no matter how much red coloring I put in, so I minimized the red I used. My attempts to make designs in blue and white didn't go over very, well either, though, and the cupcakes ended up looking diseased:

The next day, I found that the red icing had settled and looked more actually red; going with a simpler concept produced cupcakes that looked more "fourth of July":

Then, I made another large batch of cupcakes. Feeling ambitious, I decided to make the chocolate version and ALSO the vanilla cream version that the Magnolia bakery lady explains online.

Making three different kinds of icing was probably a little ambitious. I ended up essentially destroying the entire kitchen. I will say, however, that the results were edifying. I recommend the youtube vanilla cream version; the milk and flour base produces a creamy texture closer to the ideal texture of your dreams (a lot of the comments online were flipping out about the lack of confectioner's sugar, which also concerned me. I'll say that you don't strictly need it in this version, but also that it doesn't hurt to add up some when the frosting is done. I'd recommend it, actually).

I made A LOT of cupcakes this round. Some were decorated:

What's the theme of the decorations, you ask? Why all the crosses? Well...the each cupcakes is actually inspired by Spenser's The Faerie Queen. Yes, the poem. The epic poem. It's a long story. Yes, I'm a nerd. We know this. Why ask?

The chocolate icing looks aesthetically the best, I feel. In all the Magnolia bakery cupcake pictures, the icing has this lovely, smooth, swoopy texture. I can't quite seem to emulate it in my cupcakes, no matter how much I try. I've gotten better, in some fairly common-sense ways: using a knife is better than a spoon; put the icing in the fridge, but not for too long, etc. But...it's still not as pretty as I'd like.

I had leftovers after my Faerie Queen batch; I made some Big Cupcakes, to threaten their smaller brothers:

Here's wot I've learned from the cupcakes-baking. Some details do matter:

1) Sifting flour. It's easily done and it's making a difference. You don't need a special flour-sifter. Any strainer will do.

2) Make sure your butter and eggs are room temperature. You can cheat by running the eggs under water. But it makes a difference.

3) Beating the butter for the recommended three minutes matters, too. It releases the lipids or whatever. I swear, it matters. Beat all the ingredients a lot, actually, and scrape the bowl a lot.

4) Don't fret about the cupcakes not being done. The recommended time in the recipe is fine. Don't give into temptation because a few of the cupcakes look like they have a bubbly center. They'll be fine.

Even if you fuck up all of this, it won't matter. Even if your cupcakes look sludgy pink and runny, people will still ask for more, even if they claim they don't like cupcakes. Because this recipe fucking rocks. You seriously can't lose. No, it's not the same as going to the Magnolia bakery and seeing Liv Tyler. But it's close.