A NEWFOUND HOBBY. AND SLIGHT OBSESSION.

Alright. So. To make a long story short, I've always been a sugar hound. ALWAYS. And I've always loved to bake and cook. This past Christmas I was given a SILPAT, a big ass cast iron skillet for paella, and a cupcake pan. The cupcake pan opened a door, somehow. Before baking with it, I purchased cupcake liners (standard & mini), a mini cupcake pan, a cupcake corer, a FROSTING DECORATOR PRESS, cute CUPCAKE GIFT BOXES, & the ULTIMATE CITRUS TOOL with a gift card (another awesome gift).

The first batch of cupcakes I made were harvest pumpkin cupcakes, which were delectable for the following week of Christmas. There has always been something about pure white frosting swirls that tickles my fancy. The recipe I found made two dozen cakes, which I boxed one dozen to share. I had my boyfriend bring them to work with him and his co-workers ate them up. It gave me that old sense of pride to hear that people couldn't stop eating them. When I went to pick Ryan up from work for lunch, one woman said she had eaten four and gave one away to a customer, who she said exclaimed how delicious they were too.

And so, there it was. A motive to go cupcake cah-razy! I've been compiling recipes upon recipes of cakes and buttercreams galore. I went out and bought a notebook with an even-now growing list of recipes that I am DETERMINED to fill up and create. I wanted to do a new cupcake every week, but because of my atypical schedule and limited income, I could only promise myself at least one new test batch a month. As I was searching the internet for a tiramisu cupcake recipe (because my father is a newfound tiramisu addict), I also came upon a recipe for a Kahlua Mudslide cupcake. The whole idea of cupcakes being adapted from mixed drinks tickled my fancy as well and so I started to collect these booze cakes for my recipe book. I don't know if it's because of the fact that I'm a bartender by night that attracted me to these cakes so much or what, but I collected a TON of these recipes.

As a side note: I came across the word CRUNKcakes during my booze cake recipe hunting & the word  just stuck with me.

And in this endeavor to a cupcake overdose, I am compelled to document the process because I'm already such a scribe & also because I simply just can't stop thinking about cupcakes! This will be kind of like a release for me.