A Little Update

My grandfather, who I grew up with and loved fiercely, passed away this week. And although he had been sick for quite some time, the “finality” of his death is hard for me to deal with. I miss you, Papa.

However, the good news is that in true Lorraine fashion, I’ve been subliminating my grief by baking up a storm- and will be blogging my successes (and okay, yes, my failures) here in the next few weeks. So don’t cancel your RSS subscription just yet… there will be yumminess coming! I promise.

Piping Hot

Much to the horror of my thighs, I’ve started baking again. It began when my sister asked me to bake a cake for her baby’s baptism party on Sunday. I decided that not only would I make my tried-and-tested Chocolate Mousse Cake (from Nigella Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess), I would surround the latter with vanilla cupcakes in varying sizes. Since I’ve never made vanilla cupcakes before (I know… I’m a chocolate person), I made a test run yesterday, using Billy’s Vanilla, Vanilla Cupcakes recipe from Martha Stewart.

The cupcakes were delicious. I cut down on the sugar in both the cake and frosting recipes, and they were still fantastic. Soft and moist and very light. But the best part was icing them.

I only have a very old, very cheap hand-me-down plastic icing decorating kit, so it was quite messy, but the cupcakes came out so pretty. Sorry, no photos- but I served some to guests last night, then sent the rest to various family members- and they were all gone before I could remember to photograph them!

Anyway, what I really want to say is that I LOVED piping the frosting. Even with my hot hands, even hotter kitchen, and el cheapo of the cheapest decorating sets, I had such a blast doing it. Now I want to buy a new set- but I need some advice. Should I order one of these?

…or stick to a more traditional set like this?

Wilton Cake Decorating Set

Your comments and suggestions please!