..........................Bad cupcake.

Ok, not terribly bad, but def not the best or even in the top 10 that I've ever had. Went to Troy on Saturday to check out a shop to sell my dresses at. There was a vegan bakery next door.....so of course we had to check it out! But, dissapointment was in my near future.

The building was great looking, all pale turquoise blue and white. Big windows in front with striped awnings over top. We walked in and the chalkboard had all the different pastries, pies, cakes and cupcakes listed. But, there was a pastry display case that had only a small fraction of what the board said they had. I ordered the chocolate peanut butter cupcake. The cake was good but the frosting was crunchy!? Like, they either added in granulated sugar to the frosting, or made thier own powdered sugar from granulated sugar and just did a half ass job at it. There was only 1 kind of tea available, no trash cans to be found anywhere, and overall we were kinda dissapointed and thought of all the ways we could run a better shop. I'm not naming the name of it as it wasn't worth remembering really. Eh. I think I just expect MORE from a vegan bakery. To be such a special niche, it should be such a special place that carries recyclable packaging and cups and more variety. I won't be back.

Not Impressed.

So while out last weekend we headed to Saratoga and I wanted a cupcake. I thought Spa City Cupcakes would still be in the Downstreet Marketplace on Broadway but it wasn't...instead it was Betty's Cakes. Not that Spa City Cupcakes was any big deal, the cupcakes there were dry, badly decorated and at the time I had thought overpriced. But boy was I wrong....first lets go over the positives of the new place. 1. It was very cutely decorated and retro looking. 2. there was a line, so I was thinking they have GOT to be good. 3. There was a good variety of flavors and the prices were on the wall. 4. Good sodas, real sugar, cute design.

So we're in line and the board says there are 3 different prices for cupcakes. I'm thinking (stupidly I guess) that there was no way possible that a regular sized cupcake would be $4.50. FOUR FIFTY! Come on! We get our selections, get a soda to share and they ring us up for over $11.00. My husband looks at the girl like she rang us up for 4 cupcakes...but no, just the 2 and a soda. WTF? This had better be the best damn cupcake I've ever had, and I bake some pretty mean all natural organic cupcakes!

We head to the record shop making fun of our little confections which were individually wrapped in a plastic container with a huge sticker on top. That might of been my first clue- most of the price was going to the look of the cupcake, the packaging of the cupcake, the effing sticker. I made fun of it to the record shop guy and he agreed, 'better be the fucking best cupcake ever!'. Well, we hoped...flash forward to 9pm that night. We got out our cupcakes and bit in. My blueberry pancake cupcake had a nice taste, but for $4 freakin 50 I would of thought that the trick of dousing the shrivelled little blueberries in flour first so they didn't sink to the bottom of the cake would of been on the bakers mind. But it wasn't. The cake was moist, the frosting was mapley, but overall not the best cupcake I've ever had. Sigh.

Wormie Cupcakes

I'm sure everyone on the planet has done these before, but it was my first time last week to do the dirt/worm cupcakes. They turned out super cute! Though I never tried one (trying to eat less sugar and crap) and these were marble out of the box as apposed to my home made organic recipe. And the worms were made of gelatin, and the tops were crushed Oreos, all big no's for me lately...but they will looked cute and the teens ate them up because when you're 16 you don't give a crap about what you eat I guess!

Hooks and Eyes and lack there of

So a while back I wrote an email letter to Dritz about the hook and eye packages they sell. At one point when you purchased a package of nickel hooks and eyes you were able to use the whole package because there were even numbers of eyes to hooks. Not so much anymore, andI've been to 4 JoAnn's to see if maybe it was just my closest store or what. Now each package you buy, unless you purchase white ones, you are screwed out of half the eyes. Instead, you get flat eyes that are USELESS really to me and I'm sure other dressmakers who use them to finish off a zipper closure in back. I wrote a letter asking if I could send all the useless flat ones back in exchange for the curved eyes. I don't think they understood, or got my sarcasm that I really wanted to send back over 100 flat eyes for the other. Either that or no one really reads the comments or questions that someone sends them and they are just being aholes about it.

Also today I baked what might be the worst looking cupcakes in the world. This was after I overcooked lentils for a salad (hot squishy mess now) AND effed up my bangs to be some weird shade of pink instead of HOT pink on the tips. Now, it looks like Barbie hair when you tried to color her hair when you were little with Crayola markers. The cupcakes overflowed out of their cups and all over the pans and have dents in them and I'm going to do my best tomorrow to fill them in with frosting so no one notices. And, AND freakin fattie cat is being a total jerk and not eating his food because the antibiotics is in it. Nice. My night had better be good.

Project Runway was ok last night, I'm not into pregnancy or designing for it really. Not really sad to see 'chicken thigh egg boy' go away, maybe he should contact Bjork? I do like her, but I think she's got the 'conceptualism' he's into. I have no clue who's going to win at this point, but am seriously thinking of trying out the next time around. Because the world needs ONE MORE vintage inspired designer, right? Right.

Ten Dollar Salad

Who runs out of grilled vegetables at 2 o'clock on a Thursday? Who only has ONE vegetable panini option? Urgh. I'm tired of having only ONE option at restaurants in town, one measly vegetarian option. At least 10 different other meat paninis, but only one vegetable one and that's the one they were out of today. I was ticked. So, I was left getting a $9.99 salad. Ten Dollar Salad. I felt like I was in the Pulp Fiction movie during the '5 dollar shake' scene. For a ten dollar salad it should of been freakin' amazing, right? It was ok. I've made something similar at home before. Eh.

I'm now watching another recorded Martha re-run and will again give my plea.

Dear Martha, I hope your new season is in HD. It would make that $10 salad so much better. Well, not really. But it would make watching your show so much better. Hugs, Jill

I don't have anything else to post on sewing today, or kittens, or cupcakes.......wait I do! I had a great cupcake from The Bread Basket Bakery in Saratoga last night. http://www.saratogabreadbasket.com/
It was fabulous- dark chocolate filled with black cherry goo and topped with super yum kinda cream cheesy frosting and had cinnamon somewhere in there and a chocolate 'S' for Saratoga. It was fantastic, I wish I had a photo. Much better than other cupcakes I've had in town, and I'm inspired to put cherry goodness in the cupcakes I'm baking tomorrow for a little girl birthday party.

Kitten Pink Cupcake

I found this most adorable catnip toy this morning by typing in the following words into Etsy search: kitten pink cupcake. It is SO freakin cute!

It's from seller spellwell on etsy and the shop is

http://www.spellwell.etsy.com/

These cute little cupcake treats have organic catnip inside (which is great!) and they have some other kinda gruesome catnip toys too (think beheaded fishies with guts trailing out) for sale in the shop. It's just too adorable not to post, and being someone who is a little psycho about her cats, even though the sick fat one is now NOT taking his crushed up meds in food, little jerk...anyways, this was cute and I had to share!

On other news, yesterday was Women's Equality Day in honor of the passing of the 19th Amendment. I spent it doing a Burma Shave in the next town over for women's health care, and we had hot pink signs and hot pink tshirts. Many cars gave us honks and thumbs up, though a couple did do thumbs down and yell "I'm not a socialist!" to which we turned and looked at each other and said "Well, neither are we!". What was cool was how many men honked, though it could of been they were just honking at 6 women in hot pink on the street...

And, because I'm in love with feministing.com I just found this fab cartoon link http://thisisindexed.com/2009/08/all-else-being-equal/

Sigh. I wish it weren't true.

can haz

Totally got this awesome idea from flickr user KateDW and followed her instructions with great success! I added some lettuce to mine, green dyed coconut flakes.
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