I Like...PUMPKIN CUPCAKES!!!!!!

Ahh, cupcakes. A friend of mine made these and I stalked her until she gave me the recipe. I've made them approximately 3 (maybe 4?) times in the last 3 weeks, and received many comments such as "Oh man, these are better than (insert name of cute cupcakes and coffee shop here)," or "GIVE ME THE RECIPE NOW," or "Quit social work and bake," or "MMMhhmmahhhrghaekla." I'm not bragging, just saying this recipe is good. If you make them, you'll get these comments as well. Bonus: it lets you use cake mix!

1 box supermoist yellow cake mix - I used the Pillsbury Moist Supreme or whatever the name is because it has a cup of pudding in the mix!
1 cup canned pumpkin puree - go stock up on this because apparently we are in the midst of the Great Pumpkin Shortage of 2009, no lie.
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggsMake as directed on box (omitting the water).

Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting
This is the recipe my friend gave me, and I kind of worked off of it based on how much icing I needed because this made WAY too much. Literally, it got me through 2.5 batches of cupcakes.
1 quart heavy whipping cream
8 ounces cream cheese - I ended up using a little more than this so stood up a little better
2 cups confectioner's sugar2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Beat with electric mixer until stiff peaks form.

Voila!

A few cupcakes for a friend's birthday:

The enormous bowl of icing (AFTER I iced 12 cupcakes):

What some people look like when they taste the cupcakes:

Enjoy!

I Like...Midterms. Oh, wait.

October was an absolutely CA-razy month for school. I really think that professors get together and have a little meeting with tea and crumpets and their little devil horns and say to each other, "Hum, how many papers and tests and presentation can we give ALL IN ONE WEEK?" And they do that for 4 consecutive weeks, rendering their poor innocent students exhausted, stressed out, and increasingly vulnerable to baking.

Huh? Is that just me?

Despite the craziness of school, we also had a bajillion other things going on, making for month full of fun but insanity as well. Sooo, here is a recap of October 2009, pictsha style:

First, we celebrated some birthdays with delicious cheesecake!

Then, we went to Dallas for a wedding. But then I forgot my camera, so I'll just tell you that there were Mardi Gras boas, light up dolphin necklaces, and neon sunglasses. I got one picture from my phone:

Next, we went to Chicago to see my B-A-yooteeful cousin get married:

We also enjoyed some delicious Chicago hot dogs with the fam:

Then, our wonderful Jen came to visit!!! She got to stop in OKC for a few days before her residency interview in Tulsa. She is amazing and it was so great to see her after 2 years! We baked. A lot:

First, we made a chocolate chip pie, Emeril style. It was a delicious pie, but it lied and told us it was done when it really wasn't. I hate deceptive baked goods.

Then, Jen taught me how to make blue cheese souffles! Apparently, souffles are not nearly as tricky as I've always heard. Nice and puffy:

It so fun to see Jen!

Then, we celebrated more birthdays!

Finally, I discovered that I love to bake cupcakes, unleashing a scary addiction that shows no signs of dissipating anytime soon. So beware, friends, cupcakes are coming! So far, my favorites have been red velvet (from Martha Stewart's Cupcake book, my new favorite book EVERRR), and pumpkin. I made both of these for the OU-Texas game:

Get it? School colors. Woo.

Soo, that has been my life for the past month (aside from stupid papers and such). I feel like I ran a marathon. Yay November.

Also - Happy Friday

So after we baked pumpkin cupcakes yesterday (after I got home from the lovely ER), Hannah and I had a dance/singing party to this song:



Also, please see the real video (couldn't be embedded), complete with awesome angsty stares, chin beards, and theatrical hand movements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgH-jWCny9U

Don't judge me.

What If Oklahomans Knew How to Drive?

There is something you should know about Oklahoma. This place is like the tornado capital of the world, and when I am cowering in my closet, any self-respecting Okie is running outside to "feel the wind," as Scott would say. They are hard core.

However.

When a little rain decides to come to town, people FREAK OUT. AHHHH WHAT IS THIS RUNNING DOWN MY WINDSHIELD I MUST PULL INTO THE LEFT LANE AND GO 45 MILES AN HOUR ON INTERSTATE 35 AND BRAKE EVERY 1.8 SECONDS OR ELSE I WILL DIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!! I really think that's what they're all thinking. But that's besides the point.

So yesterday, I was driving myself down to Norman at roughly 8:00am for class. It was raining - not pouring, just raining - and people were freaking out, as usual. So I had the freaker outers on one side of me, and the crazies who are oblivious to anything who still think it's okay to go 85 miles an hour when it has been raining for a while, and the roads are quite slick. Somewhere in the middle, people - not 90-year-old slow, but not speed racer fast. It's possible, I promise.

I am dutifully merging into the middle lane where the left lane ends, but the crazies are racing down to the verrrry LAST possible second so they can get to the front of the line, because THAT will make them get to their destination wayyy more quickly. So the freaker outer in front of me is braking frantically, but not letting the crazies in, because that would just be wussy. But no, the crazy will not let them get the best of him after his dangerous and a-hole-like maneuvers to the front of the line, so he just decides to go. Ehh, they'll stop, ehh, I have room, ehh, who cares. EHHHH WE ALL SLAM ON OUR BRAKES AND BIG TRUCK BEHIND ASHLEY SLAMS INTO HER.

So there I am, on the side of the road, strangely calm but staring at the back of poor Rocky the Rav4 while the very nice man (Roy, by the way) who hit me is assuring me that he is a good person and takes responsibility for his actions and will call me with his insurance info as soon as he gets home.

All is ok - I have a pretty sore back/head/wrist, but paranoid husband made me go visit his ER doctor boss to get it all checked out (which, by the way, I learned it is a very bad move to tell the person who hit you that your husband has an ER doctor friend, woops). So I'm good.

But it made me think - what if Roy hadn't been so nice? What if he had just lost his job and didn't have insurance anymore? What if I was actually injured but didn't happen to know someone who could get me into the ER in 5 minutes instead of 8 hours? What if the accident was more severe and one of us got hurt? If he didn't have that piece of paper, I'd be in a hospital, desperately thinking about how on Earth I was going to pay the $50,000 medical bill. I know, I just got rear-ended, blah blah blah, but it made me think for a second about all the What Ifs, and how thankful I am that things played out the way they did. Because for a lot of people, they don't, and this incident that is an inconvenience to me would change someone else's life.

But hey, I got a great friend out of it - Roy calls me approximately 5 times per day. Yay Roy!

Song Obsession of the Week

1) So You Think You Can Dance is BAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!! Here's hoping to a more exciting season this time around.

2) SYTYCD always provides me with amazing music. Case in point:



Ahh John Legend, you are grand.

An Ode to the Neighbors of 42nd Street

I live on 42nd Street
It is so very nice
We love our little house
And all the fun there is in Crown Heights.

We love to take walks at night
Or hang out at the Sip
Get some frozen yogurt, you ask?
It's oh so very hip.

But while we love our place a lot
I must go ahead and say
There are some weirdos on this block
And they get weirder every day.

There's Tony on the right
Who likes to rev his cars
He likes to kidnap our friends
And make them drive him to bars
(and stop for a whiskey coke at La Baguette and make them take him to pick up his whale steak).

There are the dudes down the way
Who like to party hard
They have a statue of a lion
And have parties with their bed in the yard.

There's Katharine and Thad on the left
They are our very good friends
We like to play Mario Kart a lot
And if you're playing Katharine, you're effed

Then there are the new ones
I don't even know their names
But they are bonafide crazytown
This isn't even a game

They like to sit on their porch
And they literally sit all day
Sometimes yelling, sometimes crying
Other times hitting people in the face

Sometimes they knock off a gas line
And they say it was because they were sweeping
But they are probably building a meth lab
And it will explode while we are sleeping

They pound on Katharine's wall all night
Screaming EFF YOU, EFF YOU, EFF YOU
They have large pitbulls who run around
And do not discriminate where they poo.

These lovely friends are leaving us
Tomorrow, or so they say
If they don't, their landlord will call the cops
And in jail for a while they will stay.

I love you, 42nd Street
Don't doubt it, I really do
But when will you stop throwing the crazy?
Hopefully very, very soon.

The End.

P.S. I know I should be the next poet laureate, you don't have to tell me.
P.P.S. IF YOU KNOW ANYONE WHO IS NOT A FELON AND IS LOOKING FOR A CUTE DUPLEX IN AN AWESOME NEIGHBORHOOD (seriously, it's great. super cute with sushi neko, VZD's, the wedge, etc very close), PLEEEEEASE SEND THEM OUR WAYYYY!

I Like...COOKIES

What happens when Ashley has a lot of reading to do, a husband who is on call, and a free Saturday morning? Ashley bakes! (Ashley is not sure why she is blogging in the third person, but it reminds her of a high school basketball coach slash teacher who used to go entire classes speaking in the third person and it was awesome).

So a SUPER classmate of mine decided to be incredibly kind and bring cookies to our afternoon class on Wednesday...and they were amazing. I don't have her exact recipe, but I found a very similar one on the Holy Grail of cooking, aka AllRecipes.com, and they turned out very yummy. They are called Dishpan Cookies, but I don't really get that. For serious though, these cookies have like 13094 delicious things in them, so every bite is like a SURPRISE! Whatcha gonna get?!?! I don't know!!!

(Have I had a lot of coffee and sugar and cookie dough this morning, you ask? NOOOO!!!!!!)

Whatever, here's the recipe:

(The recipe on the website says it makes 72 cookies...I like cookies but I don't need 72 of them, so I cut the recipe in half).

1 cup margarine (but I used butter because margarine is weird)
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups cornflakes cereal
3/4 cup rolled oats
1 cup flaked coconut
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the margarine, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture until just blended. Then mix in the corn flakes cereal, rolled oats, coconut, and chocolate chips. Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are lightly browned. Cool on wire racks..

YUM!