hypothetical question

Would a wedding be "ruined" if there was no wedding cake? Or would the lack of wedding cake (or in this hypothetical situation, wedding cupcakes) be a hilarious story to tell at the 50th anniversary party? "We didn't have dessert at our wedding, grandbabies, because your aunt Kate, who was supposed to bring the cupcakes, stayed home and ate them all."


Let me put it another way: I have 300 hypothetical cupcakes on my kitchen table right now and I am hypothetically considering opening a hypothetical box to have JUST ONE. Possibly two. Is that wrong? Hypothetically, of course.

the final frontier, & also easter

The yachtsman just had this conversation with himself while I stared at a blank bl*g post: "What are you doing? Writing a bl*g? About the space shuttle liftoff? There're more women in space than ever. More Japanese in space than ever. You know what that means: It means hamachi in space."

Yesterday was Easter. Jesus rose from the dead, and I rose from the couch and went to my Greek stepmom's. This year the cupcakes (aka the sin that Jesus died for) were made by Mojie.

Photo by Mojie.

You can read about last Easter and find the world's best spanakopita recipe here.

After a long diatribe about hitching a ride with the Russkies after the space shuttle program ends ("It's like taking the bus"; "That's not how we roll"; "I don't even think they have bathrooms"; "Do you know what the Russkies eat in space?"), the yachtsman emailed me this photo. "For your bl*g," he said.

my ship has come in

I have excellent news, my friends, excellent news indeed.

I don't know about you all, but I've been going through mini-cupcake withdrawal since the end of farmers market season last fall. Starting this week, however, our days of jonesing for adorable little cupcakelettes with pretty dollops of frosting are over: My Little Cupcakes are for sale at Sweet Clover Market in Essex and City Market in downtown Burlington. As I told MLC, I'm going to be her biggest customer. Literally. Between the yachtsman's weekly cake baking and My Little Cupcakes a five-minute walk from my house, I'll be living large. I repeat: Literally.

One of the chocolate cupcakes with peppermint frosting Mojie and William got for my co-birthday party in January.

If you've already had a My Little Cupcake, you've probably stopped reading this and are on your way to the store right now. If you haven't (or even if you have), MLC is doing a product demo (read: free cupcakes) at the co-op this Saturday from 3:00-6:00 p.m., which is coincidentally exactly when I'll be doing my grocery shopping. I swear, MLC, I'm not stalking you: It takes me three hours to buy groceries every week, and I always push my cart back and forth, up and down the aisle where the free cupcake giveaway is happening.

the reason for the season

Christmas Eve: My sister-in-law made chocolate cupcakes with peppermint frosting, and my mother-in-law got drunk on fruitcake. I hope your holidays are as full of fun and love and dessert-wishlist fulfillment as ours.

holiday dessert wishlist item #2: my little cupcakes

Not only do I want one of these chocolate peppermint cupcakes under the tree on Christmas morning, my New Year's resolution is for My Little Cupcake to open a cupcake shop in 2010, preferably in downtown Burlington. Because a Couch Jedi cannot live by gruel alone, and I'm not sure I can make it through this bitter winter without a regular (possibly daily) dose of my favorite tiny dessert.

A lemon raspberry cupcake from summertime, when the livin' was easy.

postcards from sarasota

We've spent most of our time so far by the pool,


though there have also been bike rides


and cupcakes (which, frankly, we ate by the pool).


The bad news is that my master plan, in which my mother cooks all my meals while I'm Florida, is not going according to master plan, so at this point we're subsisting mostly on Chipotle. Soon, though, I will leave the side of the pool and enter the kitchen. Tuesday, maybe.

names have been changed to protect the innocent

There were not a lot of kids on the street where I grew up. Most of our neighbors were older couples, their children already grown and out of the house. Other than my sister Mojie and me, there was Lynn, whose parents left her most of the time in the care of a timid, elderly woman who Lynn said was a maid but I think might have been her grandmother; Kerrie and Mousie Hoff (Mousie claimed to be half girl, half boy, half mouse), smart, homely, nerdy girls who have probably since won Nobel prizes; and a houseful of boys who did NOT play with girls. So for a couple of summers before Lynn was sent to reform school, Lynn, Kerrie, Mousie, Mojie, and I spent most of summer vacation in each other's company.

Lynn was pure evil, so she was the ringleader, obviously, and she basically turned each summer into a season of Survivor by starting a "club" as soon as school let out and then having the rest of us do "initiation rites" for the next three months. Like Survivor, there were shifting alliances, challenges, and tribal councils in the form of "club meetings" held under a bush in Lynn's backyard. Lynn would exclude at least one person from each club meeting, frequently changed passwords and secret handshakes so no one knew who was in and who was out, and got the rest of us to do her bidding all summer, which usually involved doing ring-and-runs to the neighbors and terrorizing the elderly woman who may or may not have been Lynn's grandmother. There was also the occasional game of kickball.

Ever since then I've been a little wary of clubs (and, frankly, girls), but when I read about the Martha Stewart Cupcakes Club, I wanted to join. Here's how it works: A bunch of bakers from all over the country make a recipe once a month from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes cookbook and then bl*g about it and post photos on Flickr. It's a winning combination: Martha Stewart, cupcakes, food bl*gs. If not for the fact that I don't bake, I would bribe, claw, or backstab my way into that club. Instead, I'm starting my own, which is what I should have done back in the summer of 1982.

My club is called the Mark Bittman Minimalist Club. I am the club president, treasurer, and sole member. The club rules are very strict: Every Wednesday there's a new Mark Bittman column, recipe, and video on the New York Times website. That's the strict part. Mark Bittman has to post a recipe EVERY Wednesday or I will NEVER show him the secret club handshake.

The less strict part is the part where I make the recipe he posts. I do this most weeks anyway, because his recipes are usually simple and quite delicious. I do not make his recipes when they involve mushrooms (blech) or chicken (nasty). I also do not make his recipes when I'm tired, working a lot, or too busy watching TV. And I won't necessarily post my attempt at his recipe the same week the recipe appeared, because that's asking a lot of someone who barely survived Lynn's summer club, was kicked out of Girl Scouts, dropped out of high school, and can't work a 9-5 job.

This recipe, from September 25, is a southwestern, autumn version of the classic summer potato salad. I have one word for you, people: yum (that both describes this dish and may or may not be the secret club password: YOU WILL NEVER KNOW). The potatoes are sweet and creamy, the dressing tangy and spicy, and, unlike regular potato salad, this is hearty and complex enough to serve as a main dish.

Roasted Sweet Potato Salad
From Mark Bittman's Minimalist column in the New York Times.

3 or 4 sweet potatoes (about 1½–2 pounds), peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks

Or not cut into 1-inch chunks.

1 large red onion, chopped
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
s&p
1–2 tablespoons minced fresh hot chili, like jalapeño
1 clove garlic, peeled
juice of 2 limes
2 cups canned black beans, drained


1 red or yellow bell pepper, seeded and finely diced
1+ cup chopped fresh cilantro.

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Put sweet potatoes and onions on a large baking sheet, drizzle with 2 tablespoons oil, toss to coat, and spread out in a single layer. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Roast, turning occasionally, until potatoes begin to brown on corners and are just tender inside, 30 to 40 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, put chilies in a blender or mini food processor along with garlic, lime juice, remaining olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Process until blended.

I immersion blendered mine in the immersion blender container.

3. Put warm vegetables in a large bowl with beans and bell pepper; toss with dressing [this at first seemed like a lot of dressing to me, so I didn't add it all, but the potatoes absorb it, so add it all or you will not be invited to the next club meeting] and cilantro. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Yields 4 servings if you are feeding sweet-potato-eating mastadons: I have enough of this to eat until I'm 40.

gruel on toast

The terrorists did not, in fact, win: It's late September and we're still eating tomatoes. Later this week I'll be frying up some of the green ones,


and this weekend the yachtsman and I made one of our favorite summer dinners, probably for the last time this year: a fat, juicy heirloom tomato, sliced and drizzled with olive oil and balsamic, then sprinkled with a little feta or goat cheese; and fresh corn, boiled and rolled in salty butter. Saying we "made" that dinner is an overstatement: we sliced and shucked it. The most effort of the evening went into a little shizzle I call walnut toasts, and really these are very little effort at all. So little effort, what I'm about to share with you should not qualify as a recipe.

Walnut Toasts
Adapted from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen, my favorite cookbook for simple, delicious, vegetarian food, though I think a little part of the yachtsman dies every time he sees me pull it off the shelf because he knows he will be eating gruel for dinner.

1/3 cup walnuts, chopped
a little less than 2 tablespoons olive oil, separated
1 clove garlic, minced or pressed
bread, sliced (2-4 pieces, depending on how big your bread is)
parmesan cheese, grated
s&p, to taste

See the rind on that cheese? Don't throw it away. When you've grated down to the end, wrap up the rind and throw it in the freezer; we'll be using it later on to make soup. Soup that goes quite nicely with walnut toasts, in fact.

1. Chop your nuts and place in a small bowl.

2. Heat 1 of your 2 tablespoons olive oil in a little pan over medium heat. Add garlic and saute until translucent, taking the garlic off the heat before it browns. Pour over nuts.

3. Add (less than) the other tablespoon of oil to nuts (you want the nut mixture to be wet with oil but not swimming in it) and add salt & pepper to taste.

4. Lightly toast the bread. For myself and the yachtsman I use whatever I have on hand, usually the same bread I make toast with for breakfast. But for special occasions on which I am serving gruel for dinner to unwitting guests, I use a fancy country bread.

5. Top the toasted bread with the nut mixture and sprinkle with grated parmesan. Pop in the toaster oven (or the regular oven if you don't have the toaster variety) to slightly melt the cheese.

This bread is presliced; when I buy nicer bread to serve to nicer people, I slice it a little thicker.

Walnut toasts are health food: Studies have shown that a diet rich in walnuts cancels out a diet rich in cupcakes. But walnut toasts are not hippie food; even the yachtsman likes walnut toasts, and he bought veal at the farmers market on Saturday. I'm pretty sure that walnut toasts are a super food, and they're definitely a super-easy-but-delicious food. If you have leftover chopped walnuts because your husband has decided to grill a sausage to go with his soup instead of eating nuts on toast, pop the nuts in the fridge and eat them the next day for lunch -- on toast sprinkled with cheese or with a spoon out of the bowl. To balance out all this nutrition, have a cupcake for dessert.

happy weekend to me

My Little Cupcake is making chocolate peanut butter cupcakes for the Williston Farmers Market tomorrow. Don't even try and stop me.

Have a great weekend.

my little cupcake & lucky lady design

Lemon raspberry & malted milk ball cupcakes

Although I cannot claim to have made these cuties, not eating them for long enough to take a few photographs was a pretty major accomplishment. But within seconds of snapping the last picture, they'd been devoured. Please note the use of the passive voice. Who devoured them? Who knows? Who's counting? Have we met? Excuse me.

Please note the use of the active voice: Michelle made these cupcakes. Michelle is My Little Cupcake, and she is at the Williston Farmers Market every Saturday (except this coming one). She posts the flavors she's going to sell that week on her bl*g ahead of time. Get there early: She usually sells out by one o'clock.

And though not edible, Mojie's jewelry is another good reason to visit the Williston Farmers Market on Saturdays.

The littlest sass modeling a pendant

Her pendants and rings and earrings and magnets are so pretty you might want to eat them, but they'll look better around your neck or in your ears than in your mouth. And the jewelery might distract from the cupcakes you're wearing on your thighs.

In addition to cupcake thighs, I apparently have old lady hands