Red Velvet Cupcakes!

Last night I decided to make something else from my Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. The next cupcakes on the book were chocolate, but they didn't sound very good appealing to me so I went for red velvet with cream cheese frosting. These turned out great! Every day I get more excited about The Hummingbird Bakery Recipes (there is also an awesome app from them)

The recipe is very strange, It asks for vinegar!! but it was a success. I brought them to work and they lasted only 5 minutes.


P.s. GOOD NEWS:

Lilo is already driving here! he will be here this afternoon! so this baking frenzy will probably slow down a bit. However, I have enough cream cheese frosting left to make a couple more batches cupcakes AND enough pumpkin to make another batch of whoopie pies!

New Mexico: Las Conchas

One of my favorite places to go to since I moved to New Mexico is Las Conchas, in the Jemez Valley Area. This place is about an hour and a half from Santa Fe, or thirty minutes from Los Alamos. Driving there is an awesome experience, since you can see the landscape change from the classical super dry desert from New Mexico to a much fresher, greener, and moist environment. Whenever someone comes visit me I bring them there.


- In the summer:

This is my favorite rock climbing place in New Mexico

Click the link to see more pictures! 

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

I've been holding my breath waiting for Lilo to move with me permanently. He will join me for my last month in New Mexico, and then we start our summer moving process, which will involve driving across the country! Like in the movies! Lilo was supposed to leave Illinois yesterday and drive to Texas, and then tomorrow he was going to drive from there to New Mexico. But of course, his car broke down in the middle of Oklahoma with nothing around him but a Walmart, a hotel, and a repair shop! They managed to make his car run well enough for him to get to Dallas, but now he is stuck there and wont be able to join me until the car is fixed. I feel like a child who was promised ice-cream after dinner, dreamed about the ice cream all day, and at the end of dinner was told "Nope, no ice-cream tonight" 

The Best Way to Eat Garlic!

A while ago we went to the Rooftop Pizzeria in Santa Fe, and ordered a pizza that had at least three whole garlic cloves per slice. When we first saw it we were very confused, but then we tried it, and oh my!

Lilo's Roasted Garlic 

Roasted garlic is so buttery and soft, it literally melts in your mouth! The garlic flavor has just the right intensity, its not too much, but if you loooove garlic then this is definitely intense enough. Alexei ate two entire heads of garlic in a day and a half, and even his farts smelled like it, so you may want to take it easy.

To make it you peel the outer layers of the bulb, and cut the top off, so that all of the cloves are exposed. Drizzle with some olive oil, and salt/pepper (optional), wrap the entire head on aluminum foil (like you would to cook potatoes when camping!), and stick it in the oven at 400 degrees F for about 35-40 minutes.

Once its done the cloves just fall out of the skin, and they taste amazing! you can put this on a pizza, spread it on bread with butter to make amazing garlic bread, smash it and put it on pasta with just a bit of olive oil and pepper, and who knows what else!

So easy and definitely worth adding to your cookbook!

Silly in the Snow

The first time I saw snow I was 19 years old. It immediatly made me start acting lile a 2 year old. I have countless videos of me my sister and I doing snow angels on the pavement (there was some snow there, but it's invisible), throwing 1 inch diameter snowballs at eachother (we would scrape it from tiny corners where it would barely acumulate) and trying to slide down grass hills as if we were sledding. After 4 winters in Illinois and one in New Mexico the exitement hasn't worn off!

New Mexico: Kakawa Chocolate House

The first time Lilo came to visit me we found Kakawa. This is a pretty popular chocolate house in Santa Fe known to make really good hot chocolate, as well as truffles of all sorts of flavors. We ordered a small hot chocolate and some truffles. When we got the hot chocolate we were really confused, since it the tiniest thing! (tinier than a very small expresso) However, it was very very very thick, so it ended up being fine. 

To Start the Day with Breakfast

I used to never have breakfast. And I never had energy, I ate whatever was put in front of me, and I never felt good. The problem was that I would wake up 15 minutes before class/work, and have to run without having any time to do anything. Then I started working 8/5, and I realized that without breakfast I couldn't make it through the day. I still wake up late, but while I get ready, I microwave some oatmeal, and then I pack it in my lunch bag to eat at work. I've even started to eat breakfast consistently on weekends, and I must say that it has changed everything.

My First Cupcakes (Vanilla)

So I overcame my fears and decided to make cupcakes. Lilo gave me "The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook" for our anniversary, and it was just tempting me too much. So I made them. I made a couple of changes from recommendations that I found online about baking at high altitude, but they still were not perfect. Actually, they are far from perfect. They collapsed a bit, so the center of them has a valley. Also, the cake itself is sooooo airy. It feels like there is only air in there. I don't know if I should blame the altitude or my abilities, but I have the feeling that it was a combination of the two.