Cupcake Wars!! ...with myself

A couple weeks ago, I was at TJ Maxx and I wandered into the home/kitchen section just to take a peek (or so I thought). I ended up leaving with a cupcake pan, among other things, but the cupcake pan is the culprit here. I ended up spending my Sunday afternoon-to-night baking cupcakes. Lots and lots of cupcakes. Well, at least it seemed like a lot to me (24), given that I'm a homemade cupcake newbie. I wanted to be ambitious and planned to make vanilla cupcakes with a jasmine whipped cream filling and topped with basil buttercream...AND chocolate cupcakes filled with peanut butter cream and topped with cream cheese frosting. Well, I made bits and pieces of the recipe. Let's begin:

Oh by the way, I was so glued to the recipe directions, since I had no clue what was supposed to go into these cupcakes, that I forgot to take pictures of my ingredients and steps along the way. OOPS!

I <3 my KitchenAid mixer



It starts with the butter...



...and then a whole bunch of steps...and then it goes into the oven!



Some cleaning since I only have one mixer so that I can start on the next "step"



Chocolate! Tip: add a bit of ground coffee to enhance the chocolate flavor!



Vanilla's out of the oven and just hanging around





The chocolate cupcakes went into the oven at some point too and I work on the whipped cream filling for the vanilla cupcakes. No jasmine flowers were blooming on our plant, so I settled for some strawberry jam with real strawberries in it



DING!



Did you know that cupcakes have cores too? :)



All done!



There was no peanut butter and I didn't like the cream cheese frosting...but it still doesn't give me an excuse to not photograph the choco cupcakes.

Anyway, I'll try to do next better next time at documenting! It was a bit difficult because my hands were constantly sticky, sugary, floury, or oily and I was already washing my hands like a million times in between things.

Either way, the cupcakes were absolutely delicious!! I brought them into work and everyone really liked them, at least that's what I was told..! :)

If you'd like the recipes, post a comment below!

A Mysterious Newborn

I wanted to share a couple photos from a quick newborn session I did a few weekends ago. The parents don't want his/her identity to be revealed, for fear of the public harassment they'd get for having such an absolutely adorable baby!!! :) I love this family and I was so thrilled to be able to take their first "professional" photos. Thanks to the parents of this cutie pie. :)

Modeling the pensive look.



Now dancing a jig! What a talented baby!



By the way, I made a new logo. Any thoughts/comments on it? Too girly? Too simple? Too...some other word I can't think of? If you're unsure about why I decided to brand myself as "13:8," look up 1 Corinthians 13:8a.