I’m getting pretty good at this breakfast thing. It’s become my favorite meal of the day. Although, I haven’t been doing much for dinner. I need to work on that! Well, I guess I haven’t been entirely ignoring dinner. I did try Orangette’s lentil soup recipe and OH MY GOD, how I loved it! It is the cheapest meal ever. Well, I suppose, not so much if you don’t already have the spices on hand. I didn’t, but I have access to Indian food stores where I can get big bags of spices for like a buck. I feel like I’m ripping them off when I have my arms full of spices and only have to hand them a ten dollar bill (and I even got change back!). If I had bought the same stuff at the grocery store, I’d be spending three times as much. I recommend searching out any ethnic food stores in your area. You can find all sorts of exotic items on the cheap.

Anyways, I also tried to make cupcakes and let me tell you….they were awful! I followed the recipe for Chai Spice cupcakes over at the Cupcake Blog and the cake part was alright. It was a bit dry (I’ll blame myself for that) and the slight hint of spice just made it weird, it took away from the chocolate flavor rather than enhancing it, but the frosting is what really killed them. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t eat frosting that is so sweet that it hurts my teeth. I can’t deal with a box full of powdered sugar in my frosting. I didn’t even add as much as the recipe called for and it was far beyond my sweet limit. Far beyond any sweet limit.

Anyone know a good frosting recipe that doesn’t include loads of powdered sugar or any whipped cream style frostings? Maybe I should try a cream cheese based frosting?

In other cake news…

I finally got my palm sugar in the mail (you can’t buy it anywhere around here for some reason) and will soon be trying avocado cupcakes with palm sugar buttercream frosting. Hopefully, I’ll be successful. I still cannot find Pandan leaf anywhere and that is one of the ingredients called for in the frosting, but I’m hoping I can get away with not using it. I’ll let you all know how it turns out.

I’ve also been experimenting with pancakes and have yet to find a pancake recipe that creates pancakes that look good, are fluffy, AND yummy. First I tried buttermilk pancakes. They turned out really flat and heavy. Then I tried a ricotta pancake with lemon and boy did it taste good, but it sure looked crummy. It wasn’t as fluffy as much as I would have liked either. The search will continue on…