Friday, January 30, 2009

I have these adorable glass jars that I bought at ikea. I bought them with the intention of keeping sprinkles in a decorative way. I'm now thinking they might be cute to put spices in. Now the question is, how do I tell when spices are good? I know I can just go to the grocery store and pick up McCormick's or Tones and they'll be perfectly adequate. But the product is only as good as its components, so I should use better spices. But do I want madagascar cloves or ceylon cloves? I know that tea from ceylon isn't necessarily the best one can get, it falls under the perfectly adequate category more often than not. Does that mean the cloves are no good? I know madagascar vanilla beans are quite good, does that bode well for the cloves?

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Want please



This is currently on sale at surlatable.com
If anyone is desperately looking to shower me with presents, this would be a good start.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Bakery on the Common

On this past sunday my girlfriend and I finally had a corresponding day off. So we decided to give our local bakery a try. It's called Bakery on the Common, and on days where it isn't about a billion degrees below zero it's also walking distance from our apartment. We went initially for breakfast. But when it turned out my favorite dessert place Pieces (to be discussed later) was closed on Sundays, we went back for cupcakes.

They seem to switch up what kind they have fairly often. Last time we went in they had high tops. I wish I would have gotten a picture of them. The were chocolate cake piled high with some sort of marshmallowy goodness then dipped in chocolate. We were bigs fans. This week we got chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and a vanilla cupcake with chocolate frosting.
First and foremost, points for being adorable. I love the slightly homemade, not too fussy appearance. And I can't lie, I like my cupcakes to be about 1/3 made up of frosting. And on that note, I was quite pleased. Both cakes were nice and moist. The vanilla cake wasn't really vanilla, it was really more of a yellow cake. Which is fine, I like yellow cake. It just wasn't what I was expecting. We both agreed that we prefer their chocolate.

All in all, they earned a respectable 7 out of 10 on our completely arbitrary scale. Which basically means they've peaked my interest in the bakery, but if there were another kind I'd definitely try it before going back to one of these.

If anybody has tips on a good bakery, let me know. I'd love to have a local bakery I could call my own.

Intro Post

Hiya! My name is Jennifer. I'm twenty-three. I'm a native Iowan transplanted in eastern Massachusetts. Right now I'm a barista extraordinaire (much like a regular barista, but with a flair for the dramatic). But my dream is to go to culinary school, study baking and patisserie and open my own bakery.

What you can expect from this blog is an account of my culinary adventures, mostly in the form of cupcakes. There will also be much talk of coffee and tea related subjects.


Me
Some cupcakes

Can you feel the excitement?