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.

Nifty.

I think this was a scraper?



I'm not sure what this was, too thick for a projectile point.

historic trash.

you kinda gotta zoom in, but this granary is at a popular view point. Just noticed it for the first time.

Finally saw these granaries! Also directly below a popular viewpoint.

Can you tell? This is a ruin.

So you don't get the wrong idea, anything we picked up we put back in exactly the same spot in the same layer of soil as it was originally found. When you remove an artifact it loses the information archeologists can get solely from the location the artifact was found. Tim and I don't have a secret stash of flakes and pot sherds (shards of glass, sherds of pottery). Just pictures of the cool ones.

Happy Hiking!

These weren't on the list

This recipe came from Martha Stewart's cupcake book- so scratch baking. Not as big of a pain in the butt as I thought it would be. I don't usually like the frosting, but this stuff is crazy awesome. It's butter, evaporated milk, vanilla, brown sugar, pecans, and coconut, lots of coconut.

One of my co-workers, Erin, recently had a birthday and requested this one. I have to say, I really really liked these.

My fabulous future mother in law sent me the Better Homes and Gardens Cupcakes magazine- it is filled with some super mouth watering looking recipes.

I still need to do the toasted almond cupcakes, I think I'm going to try that salted caramel frosting Lorili posted on her blog as a link. Based on Kim's and Lorili's notes, it sounds like the recipe in the book needs tweaking. Happy Baking!

Shoshone point: a preview

I think this is where we'll stand

and we'll walk through these trees, how bout a cute little banner?

the elk wanted to go to hang out





probably where we will say our vows

jazz hands!

I like the little pinnacle in this one.





Sedona, red rocks

I didn't take nearly as many photos as I usually do. But here's some that I did take:

free camping!

These hot air balloons woke us up. Notice my enthusiasm.

We tried to get to the other side of this hill, but it was steep and there were bfr's and the truck said no.

neato burrito rock cairn!

cupcakes with a cheese cakey center



The strawberries photographed very well



I decided not to pipe the frosting on, just used an offset spatula. I think if we did these piping would look nicer. But the recipe book said they should be refrigerated- so maybe not?
So instead of doing just plain cream cheese chunks and strawberry jam, I took cream cheese, mixed it with sour cream, some sugar, some strawberry jam and then baked that into the cupcake- definitely more cheesecakey.
These were gone the next day. The maintenance guys, interp staff, and entrance station folk ate them really quickly. Everyone liked them a lot. Tim and I think the cupcake didn't have a lot of strawberry flavor.

Our network was out.

Somewhere between Desert View and the Village there were a couple of repeaters that got knocked out. I don't know exactly what was going on, but we didn't have phones or internet for 8 days. Miserable. Super happy to have it back! Yay!