I decided to start a new live journal, I had my old user name for years and beyond that I wanted to start posting my posts from my baking blog.

So here I am. If you were friended by me and unsure it was because we were friends with my old account
snobbyshannie.

I'm really pissed there's not an option to have an Ad free site unless you pay now. So stupid!

But either way, here I am, baking up one vegan goodie after the other, please enjoy!

I know, it's 4am...
who wakes up in a cold sweat with the desire to bake cupcakes at 1am? I do.

Who takes 3 hours to make said cupcakes? I do.

Who comes out with a batch of beautiful cupcakes but is still not satisfied? I do!

My sleeping schedule is completely messed up lately... I went to bed at 5pm! With nothing better to do at 1am when I woke up (it's my one day off a week from the bakery) I decided I should just jump in and try to make my rainbow cupcakes again.

Instead of focusing on flavor combinations I focused entirely on the best way to get the perfect looking rainbow cupcakes.

I mixed a regular ole batch of vanilla cupcake batter. Separated the batter into 4 bowls (a 1/2 cup of batter in each) and mixed red, yellow, blue & green batters.

Starting with the red I portioned out 1/2 a tablespoon into the bottom of a sprayed (but not lined) cupcake tin. I stuck the tin into a preheated 350 degree oven and baked for about 4 minutes, until the top was cooked. I should have used a full tablespoon for the bottom layer... more on this later.




I repeated this step with the yellow batter. Using the back of the tablespoon I gently evened out the layer of batter (not shown). Because my red layers had separated from the tin (due to the cooking spray) some of the yellow batter seeped into the sides of the other layer.I baked for 4 minutes and repeated the steps for the green and blue layers. After the blue layers were done I wanted a bit of a larger cupcake so I added another red layer with some left over batter. All in all I got 6 complete cupcakes and 3 that did not have the final red layer.

I allowed the cupcakes to fully cool and then inverted the tin onto a kitchen towel. The cakes slipped out easily-- along with my hopes & dreams.



The cupcake looks good-- but not great-- from the outside. The layers seeped into each other a bit. This cupcake is the best looking of the bunch with a fully defined bottom red layer.

A few of the cupcakes you couldn't see the bottom layer at all from the side.










The cupcakes were MUCH better looking on the inside.


Vibrant, rich colors. Defined layers (though the yellow IS a bit lost). I eased my unhappiness about the outside of the cupcake by reminding myself that cupcakes are frosted-- and in this case I was planning to frost it completely in some of that left over fondant I still have on hand.





I punched out some fondant stars, painted them silver...and created this monstrosity of tacky cake.






So while this attempt was not a complete success the final product looks like something David Bowie would like-- and I'm cool with that.

In other news one of my oldest and dearest friends is coming to visit me this week! The impending visit got me feeling very nostalgic and thumbing through some old photos on my computer (unfortunately most of my old photos are still in a box in my parents barn in Florida).



I found this gem though... I'm between the guy in the Good Riddance t-shirt & the girl in the grey. Nicole (my friend whose visiting) is the 2nd on the right in black. This was EIGHT YEARS AGO (I was 16 awww) which just is insane to me. That night we we're going to see H2O and I remember being so bugged that Nicole came because we hated each other back then (a boy, it's always about a boy isn't it). My trip down memory lane also got me thinking about all the bands I listened to back then... not to get too terribly mushy but I 100% believe that music saved my life & made me into the awesome vegan baker I am today. *end nostalgic mush fest*

I hope everyone has a great week... mine will be filled with whale watching, vegan waffle carts, some random show Nicole wants to go to, and listening to my favorite CDs from when I was 16.

Since I have a bunch of LJ Friends who don't know me "in real life" I thought I'd do a quick introduction as to what I'm all about.




I'm a 24 year old newly wed (it'll be 6 months on the 29th!) and I've recently moved from Orlando, FL to a bo-bunk farm town/college town called Corvallis in Oregon. Thankfully it's only a bit more then an hour outside of Portland, or I'd have gone insane by now! My husband is studying for his PHD in conservation biology/botany/nerd, hince the big move. It's taken some getting used to but I can honestly say I (sort of) like Corvallis now. I LOVE Portland on the other hand... it really feels like the vegan food capitol of the world!

That brings me to the next bit. I'm a vegan. I've been some form or another of vegetarian since I was 8, but I've only been a vegan for 6 months now... I've had my slip ups but after the first 2 months I can honestly say I don't miss cheese on my veggie burgers anymore. For me, it's just a choice of love. I love food. I am obsessed with food. The social, political, ethical and environmental issues associated with food are incredibly interesting to me and have really affected my personal food choices. That being said, I can completely respect someone who knows where their food comes from, the chemicals and hormones that were more then likely pumped into it, and the manner in which the food made the disconnect from cow to hamburger... and still eat it with joy & love in their heart. I can't so I don't. I wouldn't eat my dog, I won't eat a cow. I don't drink breast milk, I won't drink cow's breast milk. They're easy enough in philosophy to understand, but the first few weeks of no cheese were much harder in practice. I am a better person for doing it though. The disconnect between what Americans eat and how it got there is incredibly disheartening to me. I try to make local food choices as much as possible, and every day I get better at it.




I'm a baker, which you've probably gathered by now. I currently bake for a conventional (uses milk/eggs) cafe, but I have doubled the productivity of vegan goods in our case in the few months I've been there. My vegan goods sell out faster then the conventional stuff too! I would obviously prefer to bake 100% vegan, but this is my job-- we compost, we recycle, the owner of my cafe works in the cafe every day, we get the milk & eggs from down the road and I know the cows & chickens have fresh air and sunshine, so thats how I can go to work every day. It's not perfect, but it's my job, and compared to most it's damn ethical.




My ten year plan is to get a farm, haha. But I'm serious. If I talk the talk I should walk the walk. Once my husband is done with school and settled into a career we plan on getting 5 acres and doing the whole bit. I'll get a commercial license for my kitchen and cater/make vegan wedding cakes and grow food and veggies. The whole kit and caboodle. It sounds unrealistic only because we're so disconnected from that life style... people do it every day. In fact I just read an article about a couple that up and moved from NYC to Hawaii and now they live completely off the grid. Solar panel roofs and all-- they still have their high stress careers (one of them is a freelance writer, the other a digital designer), only they use the wonderful world of the internet to get it all done. They unplug everything at 9pm and they use rain water to bathe, drink, water their veggies. Their house is also stellar, completely in line with the amazing decorating sense expected of two high payed New York Socialites... but they're just regular working stiffs who happen to harvest all their own food. Amazing.




I hope to show people that you don't have to wear overalls, or be a hippie, to be completely connected to your food. Because I look like shit in overalls and I like my clothes too over priced and my shoes too ridiculous to be a hippie. There's a great book called Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn that teaches you how to turn your front yard into an amazing vegetable garden if you aren't keen on the idea of moving to the boonies!

So there it is, my food politics in a nutshell. I won't bring them into any of my baking posts and I love people even if they are hippies, or republicans, or hunters... though hunters may creep me out a bit if I'm being honest here.

Here are some useful sites if you're interested in food at all:

the post punk kitchen: http://www.theppk.com/ (everything you need to learn about vegetarian or vegan cooking/baking)

slow food usa: www.slowfoodusa.org/ (a whole organization dedicated to preserving food culture in America, no vegan/vegetarian ties)

and a list of some of my favorite food related books:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver; http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

The Omnivore's Dilemma- Michael Pollan ;http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php

Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn- Fritz Haeg; http://www.fritzhaeg.com/garden/initiatives/edibleestates/main.html