Marble Cupcakes Adventure

I am still in the process in learning how to bake and cook and I consider myself as a beginner. I, therefore, find it simpler to bake from ready made cake mixes. But once in a while, I like to try out making something from scratch. On my good friend Mehwish's blog, I found a recipe of marbled cupcakes. Cupcakes are just my favorite things to bake and I vowed I would give these a try. When I read the recipe aloud to my sister, my first question was, what kind of measurement is "oz". She found it very funny for some reason. Anyway, I learnt it's actually an ounce. (You see why I call myself a beginner now?)
I was just waiting to buy some butter and get started. The impatient person I am, as soon as I got butter, I wanted to make them. My friend was asleep at the time. I looked up her recipe and I started converting ounces to cups/tablespoons. I knew that sugar, flour and butter weigh differently. So I did the math and wrote on a paper what I'd be needing. Didn't have self rising flour so googled that too. And then I began. As I got the flour out and mixed it with baking powder, I somehow felt that the quantity of flour looked way too much. I asked Ammi and she told me to google it again. So after discussion with Ammi I realized just in time that I had over 4 cups of flour when I needed actually just one and a bit more. =D
I messed up the kitchen and I wasn't sure how the cupcakes would turn out because of my clumsiness in measuring BUT thanks to Mehwish's accurate instructions, they turned out just perfect. \(^.^)/

Cup Cakes!

Cupcakes I discovered are just cake batter poured into little paper cups! But somehow they're cuter than a cake. People design such wonderful things with cupcakes. So I got hold of a Betty Crocker French Vanilla Cake mix and tried them out!
The french vanilla smell was so awesome while they baked.

Made some icing with fresh cream.....

 and sprinkled the colored bits!

   

Back to the Books

I haven't had the chance to read many books during my university days. But now, I've begun again. Away from the distracted life and without the worry of assignments and projects, I think this isolation for is ideal for book reading. Recently I finished listening to an audiobook of the old classic "The Secret Garden". I had read it as a kid, in a simplified form.

The last audiobook I heard was "The Time Traveler's Wife". The best thing about an audiobook is that it's like someone reads for you. Though you have to concentrate on the reading. I have drifted many times away if I were not paying attention. I suppose it's  because of the way my mind has been trained to shut out classroom lectures. ;)
A great place to find free audiobooks is http://librivox.org/
Ebooks in the form of pdfs are also good. You'll find them if you look hard enough :i
An audiobook or a pdf, I think, still cannot replace the pleasure of reading a book in hand.

The Fifth Mountain : Answers A Lot of Whys

Finished reading Paulo Coelho's The Fifth Mountain today and it had a lot of lessons in it. The book tries to explain why when everything seems perfect, things fall apart. And one has to believe that eventually life has a good plan in store and get on with rebuilding. Some memorable quotes from the book are: 

• All life's battles teach us something, even those we lose.... you'll discover that you have defended lies, deceived yourself, or suffered for foolishness. If you're a good warrior, you will not blame yourself for this, but neither will you allow your mistakes to repeat themselves
• There is no tragedy, only the unavoidable. Everything has its reason for being: you only need to distinguish what is temporary from what is lasting. What is temporary?... The unavoidable... and what is lasting?... The lessons of the unavoidable.
• A child can teach an adult three things:  to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.

Sewing and Cooking!

I sewed my first felt toy yesterday. :i It's a doll. I stuffed the body with cotton and used blanket stitch all around.

Deciding the hair for Betty was tricky since I didn't have any yarn. The first hairstyle I had for her made her look like a nun. =P So finally I came up with this:

Sewing the little dress for her was delightful! :d

I came across my barbie's furniture and Betty cooked herself a meal.....

.....and then she took a nap! ;)

Doll pattern used is from here.

I also tried a little cooking today and made spicy deep fried chicken. It turned out to be awesome. :e All thanks to Tehniat's recipe here. :)

This is my first attempt at cooking probably and I'm going to try more things soon! Keep checking back! :) :r