Watch this space!

Pin It I'm back in London and ready to bake! Or I will be, once we get into our new flat. Oh, electric 'hobs', how I haven't missed you...

Cupcakes in Cali

Pin It My sister and I have always shared a love for crafts and Martha-Stewart-y activities, but the difference between us is that she actually plans (and pays for) said activities. Usually all I have to do is show up. It's one of the things I like best about her.

Now that she has a three-year-old son, she's more nutso than ever about this stuff; she pretends it's for him, but we all know better. The other weekend we found ourselves in the same place at the same time, which is unusual for us, and I agreed to do some cupcake baking/decorating. She had bought this book:

At first glance, I assumed we'd fail miserably to re-create any of the decorations pictured in the book, but the author promised that all the cupcakes can be re-created by anybody, without special tools (just plastic baggies, canned frosting, and a lot of strange props). So we gave it a whirl.

How did housewives in the 50's make it look so easy?

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Seriously.

You know the picture: the adorable, pin-curled fifties housewife, in a perfect little circle-skirt dress with a darling half-apron tied at her tiny waist, bends over in her heels and pulls a tray of perfect little circle-cut cookies from her beautiful, pristine oven in her immaculate kitchen. No dirty dishes in the sink, no flour in her hair. No burned edges or squishy centers. Just perfection, served effortlessly.

And here's my picture: the slightly sleepy, disheveled erstwhile student, in wrinkled pajama bottoms and a dingy men's undershirt, spends hours and every dish in her kitchen making all manner of goodies for her tea party, and when she pulls the cookies from the oven they're melting into each other, burning and simultaneously too raw, the beautiful patterns of the expensive cookie cutters becoming no more than blobs in the heat of the electric oven.