it's kind of blizzardy out.

It's also my mum's birthday. Happy birthday mum! (I'm not British, I just like the way mum and mumsy sound better than mom. Also, you could say mumsy and people will still think you're more adult than if you say mommy.) I still haven't decided what items I am getting for mum for her birthday, but her gift is definitely coming from Adagio. I am in love with their teas and they are decently priced. I have 3 different teas that I keep at work and about 7 others at home. Delicious. And their sample sizes made nice stocking stuffers.
I also have to make 2 quick rants before I start talking about foods.
A) What inspires people to say "an insurance"? I don't think that's a proper term. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure it's just insurance. It sounds so weird when you say "I purchased an insurance". Please stop.
B) Please see the title of this blog. Then, stop driving like an idiot, Speed Racer.

That was much quicker than I expected. Being as it's snowing out, and I was hungry, and did a lot of cooking this weekend, I picked up dinner on the way home from work. Or, as Eric prefers to call it: "the lonely man lunch". Subway. It is kind of shameful, because I've been working really hard on not eating fast food. But! It could be worse. There was a McDonalds right next door, and I could have just as easily gone that route. But I didn't, and I made it not so terrible by getting a ton of vegetables on a turkey sandwich. Whatever. And I've got mango lemonade. Snow be damned! I've got 2 space heaters and mango lemonade and I sure as hell can pretend to be in the tropics (with flannel pajamas, thick socks, and a bathrobe).

My bosses at work asked me to make some cupcakes to celebrate a new hire. I decided to go with a lemon cupcake recipe I found here. I'm glad everyone at work told me they enjoyed them, because I was less than impressed with the way the recipe itself turned out.

My first project for these cupcakes was to make the candied lemon peel, which was pretty easy and delicious. Plus, you get leftover lemon syrup, which you can use in other things (like booze!!), or, as I found out, this recipe.

I followed the recipe for the batter closely, but I tasted before I baked, and despite knowing that the lemon flavor would come out more the next day, I knew that there wasn't going to be ENOUGH lemon flavor. Enter in aforementioned lemon syrup. I didn't really measure how much I put it, but it was at least one tablespoon. Instead of the sour cream or plain yogurt, I used low fat vanilla. The cakes themselves came out quite nicely with the addition of the extra lemon, and they expanded a lot more than I expected them to.

The problem I really had with these was the frosting. I make a pretty awesome cream cheese frosting. It's amazing. If I'm making a plain cream cheese frosting, I usually don't go very heavy on the sugar and I only use a tiny bit of milk. It's easier to pipe it on that way. But since I had never made a lemon cream cheese frosting, I went by the recipe. It tasted really sour. Not tart, lemony sour; it was more of a "Is there spoiled dairy in this frosting?" sour. Apparently I am the only one that noticed this, because everyone who at them really LIKED them (or at least didn't say anything to me about not liking them). If anyone at work reads this, honestly, I WAS NOT trying to poison you.

From now on though, if I'm making a lemon cake, I'll probably stick to this recipe.
I'm going to finish my shame sandwich and go to my room to think about what I've done.