I had a pretty little UPS note waiting for me today. I was bummed because I thought I missed their delivery and that I would have to wait one more day, but around the corner, I saw a little box tucked away and guess what was in it?

MY NEW CAMERA! WooT!

I have lots to do, learning a new camera. One little project I’m going to start on is taking photos of some of the cool business signs around Phoenix. This town has some tensile.

Here’s my first photo:

Hangar Cafe is good, but the median age of patrons is about 55 and they’re mostly ex former military. Have you ever seen the red white and blue, eagle, Constitution polo’s at Kohl’s? Let’s just say that there was a lot of those shirts represented.

I was there meeting DJ. He’s cute. A little bit of a flirt. And slobbers a little when he kisses. (his parents, my BFF from high school and her husband were there too, but when there’s a new baby, who pays attention to the parents?)

One thing about DJ’s mom is that she’s got quite the sweet tooth. While we all went for the savory dishes (biscuits, gravy, potatoes, eggs) she goes for the pancakes with lots of syrup.

Sara, here’s what you would have enjoyed if you were able to stick around on Sunday.

I don’t have a camera yet- I got a text message update from HSN and it should arrive on Thursday or Friday. It’s very exciting! But, you can imagine the following.

Cupcake Queen inspired me again with these little gems. Plus I had new cupcake liners from Martha Stewart.

I baked a box chocolate cake, took a Reese’s mini and put them in the raw batter and baked them as usual. When they cooled, I put creamy peanut butter on top and then topped that with milk chocolate frosting. These babies smelled like a little Reese’s pieces bit of heaven.

See, BFF from high school, if you didn’t have to go “play soccer” and be “athletic” you could have sat around with me and enjoyed one of these babies.

But it’s your loss. Hmmmmmmmp. I’ll just eat your share and show you.

I have hit the high life my friends. I have oftentimes been envious of those of you who get to go those high powered, high stakes dinner meetings. Drinking martini’s at Donovan’s or having a sambucca at Drinkwater’s.

Well, I have arrived, check out these digs:

Yes, that’s a green paper plate with doritos and powered donuts.

HSN UPDATE:

My camera shipped today, so I should be able to stop taking crappy camera phone pictures and be back in business really soon.

Get me a cat and call it a day. I was sitting at home on Sunday DOING NOTHING. While channel surfing, I thought about HSN and QVC, I mean isn’t that where all bored lonely souls go?

I got sucked in. I haven’t had a camera for a few months now and I don’t do good with electronic purchases. My friend Sean has a Kodak camera and he likes it, I looked at them once or twice at Target, but still haven’t pulled the trigger.

Can you believe they had a limited quantity of Kodak cameras on sale for the next TWO MINUTES with 3789 already sold! OMG!

Oh my- I need to go! Esteban this next hour.

Thinking about adding a reference setion to my sidebar on the blog. There are several reference sites I like to use when I need help cooking or need a little inspiration.

www.Switcheroo.com

Need to know the difference between grating and shreading a carrot, this is the site to reference. 

www.Yelp.com

Reviews on this site are from real expereinces, not a lot of food wanna-be critic filler like you find on some other Web sites. The nice thing too is that with each search a map with near by restaurants and shops pops up.

www.tastespotting.com

Know that you’re hungry for something or want just a little culinary inspiration? TasteSpotting.com surfs the Web for you. Each day new images are uploaded and yu click on the the one that catches your eye.

We would christen each summer with a theme when I lived in Dallas. My first summer there we were all about Madonna and martinis, the next summer Prince put out his Musicology album, so naturally it was Prince and Champaign.

It’s nice having a theme, that way you don’t have to put all your creative efforts into deciding what you’re going to have for happy hour. Once you know it’s going to be a martini, all your efforts can go into what type of martini you’re going to have. It’s all really quite efficient.

Thinking about themes, I thought it would be fun to put a theme to the next few batches of cupcakes- frozen drinks! This first batch was inspired by Michelle and Charla. Thanks Michelle for sending me the pictures.

I took a design idea from A Baker’s Field Guide to Cupcakes and adapted a pina colada cake recipe and here’s what turned out:

Making a beach scene:

Coconut, blue food coloring, graham crackers, zip lock bags and cocktail umbrellas.

1. Place 2 cups of shredded coconut in a zip lock bag with a few drops of blue food coloring. A little bit goes a long way. Shake until color is well blended.
2. Frost the cupcake as usual.
3. On one half of the cupcake drizzle the blue coconut.
4. On the other half drizzle the graham cracker crumbs.
5. Insert one beach umbrella.

What’s your favorite summer frozen drink? Do you think it could be turned into a cupcake?

I went to Texas this past weekend for Carey and Corey’s wedding- they’ve only been planning this thing for almost two years and finally it was time to tie the knot. It was a great weekend.

“Carey, do you know what La Quinta means in Spanish? It means Denny’s!” That’s what I said as we pulled up to the hotel and she saw my nice smile turn into a sour pucker. Can you believe that she thought that a La Quinta was a good option for the first few nights we were in Dallas! OMG! Do you think we actually stayed there?

“Seriously, I can’t feel my toes!” That’s how dinner started on Thursday night. Shelley ( I love Shelley) always wears stilts (not high heels, that would be reasonable). She’s the only person I know who would meet up for coffee or a quick grocery store run and be in heels that were 3″ at least during the day and a minimum of 4″ if we were going out. Shelley recently realized that she can no longer feel her toes, that’s a problem, right?

“You’re going to a strip club! It’s my bachelorette party!” There’s a lot more to this story, let’s just say that it was traumatic and I don’t want to talk about it.

I’ll get more up later. There’s the whole wedding and reception to talk about! Here’s a picture of the happy couple the next morning, CONGRATULATIONS!

Dark skies and thunder oftentimes accompany springtime showers. In the desert, we don’t have to worry about turbulent springtime weather, but sometimes we can find ourselves going through our own thunderstorms. I’m having one; BLAH!

Here’s what I’m struggling with. I have a pink freakin blog. Hello…it’s PINK. I moretimes than not, post about cupcakes…happy little cupcakes. So, what do you do when you think your pink blog looks like Pepto Bismol and you want to throw your happy little cupcakes at small children?

OK, truthfully, my aim is really bad, so I don’t think any halfway nimble child has anything to worry about.

Now that we’ve established that I’m all BLAH, I managed to make cupcakes. And if life wasn’t tough enough, I got a Rachel Ray magazine the other day. I know, you don’t have to say it…

I took a Lemon Meringue Cupcake recipe featured in one of the articles and combined it with a technique I saw over on 52 Cupcakes. I think they turned out really nicely:

Here’s an article from AZCentral: Thanks Krista for sending me the link!

Jaimee Rose
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 14, 2007 12:00 AM

We’re at least 180 days from the Scottsdale opening of Sprinkles - the worshipped Los Angeles cupcakery - and already the Valley is crazed for cupcakes.

Local foodies are dishing about them on chowhound.com. They’re being served at weddings, dinner parties and posh society events.

Places to get a cupcake fix are popping up all over: Cupcakes Corner Cafe opened in Phoenix in February, and Cupcakes is coming to Scottsdale in April. (An event heralded in 944 magazine, of all places. See, even the hipsters love frosting.)

Nationally, this frosting frenzy has been mounting for ages. New York went cupcake crazy about four years ago after Carrie and Miranda gobbled Magnolia Bakery’s confections on Sex and the City. Sprinkles opened in Beverly Hills in 2005, and customers still wait in line for 30 minutes to buy a single red velvet cupcake heaped with cream cheese icing.

Oprah passed them out on her TV show. Tyra Banks confessed to being obsessed.

Now you can buy Sprinkles mixes at Williams-Sonoma, and the country has reached critical cupcake mass. There are a cupcake blog (cupcakestakethe cake.blogspot.com), a cutesy “cuppycake” song circulating on YouTube and even Starbucks offering two-packs to take home.

Come September, when Sprinkles opens at Scottsdale and Camelback roads, we’ll have our turn to wait in line for cake.

Meanwhile, we’re getting our sweet tooth on.

At La Grande Orange Grocery in Phoenix’s Arcadia section, customers are biting into 2,000 Tammie Coe cupcakes a month. (Perhaps this is because there are 2 1/8 inches of gooey cream cheese icing piled on Tammie Coe’s decadent coconut cupcakes - we measured.)

When the legendary Barefoot Contessa Coconut Cupcakes came out as a prepackaged, $10 mix last April, there was a run on them at AJ’s Fine Foods and the shelves were emptied for weeks. The trend has prompted a cookbook spree: think 34 cookbooks with cupcake in the name, from Crazy About Cupcakes to Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, on amazon.com.

At Frances - a Phoenix boutique that has nothing to do with baking - there are cupcakes on note cards, and knitted cupcakes handmade by a local artist are selling so wildly that there’s a waiting list for new designs.

We’ve seen cupcakes on baby clothes and adult T’s alike. Gwen Stefani is putting them on handbags. Juicy Couture is printing them on $128 hoodies and calling it “cupcake couture.” Women’s tank tops strewn with cute cupcakes are selling for $49 at Electric Ladyland in Scottsdale.

The cupcake, it seems, has become a simple symbol of joy.

Slade Grove watches when customers bite into one of his cupcakes at Wicked Bakery, in north Phoenix. He adores absorbing “the facial expressions of it - they just melt into pure ecstasy,” he says.

Part of the cupcake’s charm lies in some strange illusion of virtuous control: This is your allotted portion. This is what you’re supposed to eat. It’s all contained in this neat little wrapper. How fattening can it be?

(If you don’t want to know the answer - and you probably do not - skip this bit: Cupcakes, with their heaps of icing, often have more calories than a slice of cake. Grove says they can range from 250 to 1,000 calories. Each.)

Cupcakes also carry the niceties of nostalgia: They are what moms used to bake and send to school for birthdays, before the era of prepackaged safety rules. You got to pass out your cupcakes to your classmates, who wished you a happy birthday, and everyone was nice to you all day.

“I love that they’re playful,” says Dena Patton, founder of Chat, Chew & Chocolate, a Valley events company. There’s a cupcake named for her group at the new Cupcakes Corner Cafe, which has been mobbed with hungry eyes since opening Feb. 27 in Phoenix. Eating a cupcake, Patton says, “reminds me of childhood. I love the fun of it. It’s messy. I love that I get to lick frosting off my fingers.”

But still, she says, she can’t quite believe such a melee over a $3 baked good.

“At Sprinkles, people’s eyes are like biiiiing! They just get addicted,” Patton says. “There’s like this craze around it. There are franchises. In cupcakes. That’s crazy to me.”