strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

frosting that was refrigerated before piping onto the cuppity cake

experimenting with sprinkles

m

mmmm, cactus

I got quite a few cupcakes out of the batch- actually had to throw some out.

look! baby cupcakes!

I had better luck once I refrigerated the frosting and then piped it onto the cupcake. I used some strawberry extract in the cupcake and I also used about 3/4c of pureed strawberries into the batter, someone may have recommended it and I thought it was a good idea, but it's still a very faint strawberry flavor. More cowbell?
Still quite tasty though, I never found any strawberry soda though, so maybe that was the trick. I think the frosting was my favorite part.
People like them, but they don't seem to be anyone's favorites. I think the frosting would hold up to being out of refrigeration for a few hours or so at the reception, don't you?

Lake Powell

Lone Rock

There's Abby

The sentries

canoeing down a slot canyon

Mud, glorious mud!

gnome homes!

Tim found a friend!

how do I get around this rock?

surprisingly no one got anything major stuck into their bare feet.

What? you don't wear a pfd to go climbing?

stemming

always on the lookout for arches.

Us. In the canoe- do you like the flag? I think it's to help other boaters know which way we're going.

obelisk?

now how do I get past this rock?

row row row your boat!

The water was total glass back here.

um, gorgeous!

Wahweep marina

The dam

These are from the end of April, I've been experiencing technical difficulties with the gov't computers. Hope you guys can get some ideas of fun stuff to do in the area when you come in August! I highly recommend boating.

The sun will come out...

So last night I had time to do some baking, nothing from scratch, just box, but I wanted to try something. So in honor of the Goverment Shutdown that didn't occur I present: Government Shutdown Cake.

Tim helped. I've been seing some really fabulous cakes online and I wanted to do some experimentation. I saw one similar to this on Not Martha but I did white frosting. Martha had one on her show too, but I don't have a lot of layer pans, and thought this looked like more fun. Maybe? I think next time I'm going to toast some coconut and throw that on top of white frosting, that way you'd have nooo idea that there was a rainbow lurking inside. I did add coconut flavoring, I think lemon flavoring would also be appropriate. Then it would taste like sunshine.

My co-ranger says it tastes like unicorns.

Exploring!

You may need to click on this one to increase the size to see it. Can you see the Arch site?

This is what you can see in that very first photo if you look really hard.

Inside the granary! And there's scat!

omg. You can see the hand and finger indentations in the mortar.

Hi Tim!

Another photo of scat, but isn't this one hilarious? I guess you had to be there.

Tim and I got a little sunburned, and on the way out got rained on.

Tim and I went hiking out to the East of the canyon, it was a beautiful warm day in the beginning. We being experienced canyon hikers layered, so we finally got down to t-shirts, and then the wind started. It was a nice breeze, and then turned into some fairly strong winds, and then it started raining, not cats and dogs, but enough to warrant throwing on all of our layers and rain coat. And then the next day we got snow, a 50 degree temperature swing. Yikes. I'm pretty much done with winter, thanks.

Toasted Almond with carmely maple-y frosting

Flash!

No Flash!

I found that these cupcakes were very light and fluffy. I toasted the almonds a little too long, didn't read the instructions that said to fold them into the batter, and couldn't tell that they were actually in the cake. So I think I wouldn't chop them as fine next time.
I tried the Salted Caramel frosting that the Californian Sister linked to on her blog. Complete and utter fail. I tried three times to get the sugar and cream to mix after carmelizing in the pan. All I got was hard somewhat burnt sugar in a puddle of vanilla and cream. So then I tried the carmel frosting that was from Allrecipes.com that was suggested after I couldn't get the first one to work. The one I ended up getting to work has butter, brown sugar, vanilla, cream, and powdered sugar. I beat the crap out of the frosting while it was still warm when I was adding the powdered sugar so that I wouldn't get that gritty texture I heard about. So far, the three people I heard from really liked them. (btw, who doesn't like cupcakes?) But the frosting was more maple-y I guess.