A friend at the farm!

We have a visitor this week. His name is Jake.

 Some friends of ours went away for Thanksgiving and so Jake got to come hang out with us on the farm. He seems to love sitting right here.

In front of the bay window.

So that he can keep an eye on all the animals out there.

He even recruited some help.

And J told him what a great job he was doing keeping such a watchful vigil.

But dont let him fool you. Hes a little sneaky sneakster. 

You see it was cupcake baking day here on the farm.

In case you didnt hear, I have begun the C.P.P over here. Other wise known as the Cupcake Perfection Program. This weeks cupcake? The Boston Cream Cupcake. 

The batter was forming up pretty nicely.

And I got them all baked up pretty like.

But wait...heres where it gets a little crazy...I had to leave the kitchen. For just a minute, mind you. Fast enough to run upstairs and back down again.... And dont you know that little cheeky Jake ate 11 of my 24 cupcakes that were cooling on the counter. Thats right. Cupcake liner and all.  Hence the reason you see 13 cupcakes on this cooling tray.

His interest in the kitchen should have tipped me off. Not to mention that I had heard stories from his folks about crazy mishaps in the kitchen....but nooo...here I was so trusting.

Yeah well, not anymore. Those cupcakes are going into the breadbox.

They can finish cooling in there. Safely.

Doesnt he just look like he has a tummy full of cupcakes?

Hmph. Well, at least they werent finished when he got to them. And dont worry...he was totally fine after eating all those cupcakes. Didnt even seem to phase him. 

But once I did get them finished I, of course, had to show him what he missed out on.

I think they turned out pretty nicely. Im just sayin.

Is October already over?

Can you believe its November already? 

Seems like October went by in a flash. 

We carved pumpkins.

 
We had Halloween.

 
And, I began my new cold weather survival project. 

 
Thats right. Cupcakes are going to get me through the winter. Those cold, dreary, gray days....when Im missing the sunshine and its too cold to play outside....Ill be making cupcakes. Im referring to this endeavor as the Cupcake Perfection Program. Or the C.P.P. for short. I know, it sounds very official, right? You should join. Ill make you a name tag. 

That cupcake you saw earlier was last weeks cupcake. A dark chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting. It turned out quite delightful and family and friends gave it a thumbs up. 

My main goal in all this is to keep my sanity through the winter. Im not a big fan of winter in case you didnt know that already. But also, I really would like to have a go to cupcake. You know, the one thats there for you always....the one you can count on in a flash. I mean, G is just 5....I still have lots of classroom parties to get through. So, the perfection will be making that perfect chocolate and perfect vanilla cupcake. Of course, making all kinds of everything in between. 

This weeks cupcake began with chocolate. Hard to go wrong with that, huh?

 
The end result is the black bottom cupcake. 

 
And boy, was it ever tasty. And very simple to make with very few ingredients. 

 
I began with a book from the library. It was all about cupcakes. Turned out that the pictures were very pretty, but the cupcakes just werent that good. So, then the natural progression was to get online and just look around. I discovered this great blog thats all about cooking....and from there I tried out these last two cupcakes I mentioned...with my own revisions, of course. 

So, thats where Ill be this cold weather season. And theres a high probability that I may have to be rolled out of the house come Spring time.