All I want for Chanukah

Tonight is the first night of Chanukah. I'm still in Rochester until tomorrow morning. I should be packing, but instead I'm blogging. ("Blogging.....is such a subversively naughty sounding word. Like everyone knows what it means and yet it still sounds dirty." - J.)

Here is my Chanukah wish list:






The first thing I want is the Dresden Dolls' Virginia Companion songbook. It has the lyrics and sheet music for all the songs off the albums "Yes, Virginia" and "No, Virginia," as well as lots of pictures and other cool things.












I need a new electric hand mixer. My trusty old (and I mean really old) Toastmaster 3-speed mixer broke. I don't really need something as fancy as this Kitchen Aid 9-speed professional mixer, but it's yellow!















This scarf is beautiful. I don't really wear scarves like this, but I'd wear this one! It's really expensive, though. The design on it brings me to the next item...
















I want this illustration tattooed on either the inside of my left bicep or on the side of my ribs.















I also would like a new digital camera and also a digital camcorder. I don't have any particular models in mind, though. I really like the Canon Rebel series of DSRL cameras, but I don't know if I really need something that heavy-duty.

Non-material things I want:
- My room to be magically clean
- Obama to appoint more women to high positions than he has been doing
- Better yet - a feminist revolution
- Someone to cuddle and make out with
- Straight 'A's
- The Patriots to win the Superbowl

Festive Cupcakes

I've always loved cupcakes, so I'm happy that they're so hip now. It means cupcake bakeries cropping up all over. Before today I hadn't made cupcakes in ages, so I was mostly on the eating end of the craze. But today I baked cupcakes. This is not going to be a cupcake or cooking blog (I recommend Cupcakes Take the Cake for that), but this post is going to be a play-by-play of my epicurean endeavor.

For the cake, I used this recipe for Love Potion Cupcakes. I used margarine instead of butter, and didn't add the chocolate chunks. Here's the batter:


The recipe said to put a frozen raspberry into each cupcake after pouring the batter into each cup. I tried a couple of other techniques as well - pouring the batter over the raspberry (Fig. 1), and pouring batter in, then placing the raspberry, and covering it up (Fig. 2):
Fig. 1 Fig. 2

End of phase one:


...and clean up for phase two!


I watched Law & Order while the cupcakes baked and cooled:


I wanted to decorate them to look like fireworks. I think they look kind of like Spider-man webs, but whatever. They're red, white, and blue, so that must count for something. This sequence shows the process:


This one looks more like fireworks:


Here's how they all came out!


Eating the cupcake:


They were good! I'm rather proud of how they came out. The texture of the cake is more turgid than I'm used to. The raspberry inside is a nice touch. I don't know if it will be as good when it's not still warm. Should be fine. The frosting is where the cupcake loses points. I didn't trust myself to make my own frosting; I worried I wouldn't be able to get a good consistency. But next time I'll have to give it a go.

That wraps it up!

(Yes, I ate two. :-P )