And now time for a Sweets Break

When I was a kid, my mom always made cupcakes for me to take to school on my birthday. That's probably why I like cupcakes. They're small cakes. You can't go wrong. But even with my fond memories and love for them, I am a little perplexed with the popularity of designer cupcakes. I've bought into it myself. Literally, because I spent a lot of money on the above cupcakes from a specialty shop in Seattle. I have also spent money on fancy cupcakes from a specialty shop in Ogden Utah and spent money on specialty cupcakes being sold outside a boutique during the Lavendar Festival in Sequim Washington. (Yes, they were lavendar cupcakes. In color and taste. ) All of these cupcakes had a few things in common. The first, as I said already, is they were very expensive! You could buy 2 or 3 cake mixes for the price of one of the above babies! The second is they are all very beautiful, decadent looking cupcakes. Special flavors, fancy frostings and decorations. Very pretty. The last thing in common is none of these cupcakes taste as yummy as I could bake at home. In Utah, my daughter had a cookie dough cupcake. Uh, yeah. Not spectacular. Now here in my very cute box which came in a very cute bag we have clockwise from top left : Double Chocolate, Lemon, Candy Cane, Chocolate Vanilla, Snowball and S'mores.

This cute girl chose Cany Cane which happened to be a seasonal feature so it cost 25 cents more. The super thick icing with crushed candy canes covered a pretty moist tasty chocolate cupcake. But the frosting was thick and heavy and this cute girl wasn't as impressed with eating it as she was with it's cute Christmas looks.

This Double Chocolate cupcake gets my vote for the best of them because the chocolate cake was as good as the frosting with choclate sprinkles. Even for a chocolate and frosting loving child there was way too much frosting for her taste.

Don't you thik this girl looks like this man? That's my Baby and my Baby Daddy both tasting the same Lemon cupcake. Verdict? Lemon frosting:Thumbs Up Lemon Cake:Thumbs Down

The icing didn't cover the entire cupcake which looks pretty, but allows the cake to dry out. Yuck! What a waste and we bought 2 of these! I make a wonderful lemon cupcake and after looking at these pictures I want to do some baking tonight!

As for the other 3 cupcakes, the boy who picked the Chocolate Vanilla fell asleep and didn't eat it until the next day. He expressed no opinion on it but I found the vanilla cake very dry and wasn't recovered by the good chocolate icing. And the S'mores cupcake looked very cool and I liked the toasty marshmallow topping but it was softer than a marshmallow at a campfire and it had a funny graham cracker thing going on. It was a novelty but not worth trying and that goes for the Snowball. I love Hostess Snowballs but the only thing similar was the coconut. The chocolate cake was better than hostess but the frosting was icky.

So if you really want a good cupcake, come on a my house and I'll give you cupcakes. Or as the song goes, I'll give you candy. And to prove it, here is some candy I made for Christmas.

I wish I could say making my own is the most wonderful thing after I just ripped on purchased cupcakes, but I can not. I learned that sometimes using the tried and true family recipes are the best.

I made 3 batches of my Grandma's Caramels. The first 2 I cooked too long and they turned into bricks. This 3rd batch was awesome and perfect!

I made 2 batches of fudge. I chose not to use my mom's recipe but instead went with the Eagle milk recipe and added marshmallows and nuts. That was splendid and the family finished it fast. My second batch I found on the internet was chocolate peanutbutter because I was low on chocolate chips. Gross! The texture was weird like playdough. Never again.

What you don't see here is my Great Grandma's Almond Roca which was spectacular, coming out perfectly (probably because I have made it more times than any other candy and because I received a very cool infrared thermometer!) I think I will need to make that for more holidays than just Christmas.