This was my first birthday cake in what will be a LONG month of cakes!!!

This cake was done for Kylee’s first birthday. Her mom had purchased the Wilton Winnie the Pooh pan and asked me to decorate the cake.

While I’m not a fan of character cake pan, I did have a lot of fun with Pooh!

He ended up being the “smash” cake for Kylee, and her mom loved him!

Thanks for letting me make your first birthday cake!

Have you ever heard the story of the Refund Muffins?????

No??

Well then, by all means.. let me!

Peabody did a post for these AMAZING looking Snickerdoodle muffins.

Now, I love me a Snickerdoodle as much as the next guy. But a muffin and a cookie mixed together???? AWESOME!

Apparently, someone else thought so too. And decided that they would make a double batch to bring to a pot luck. This email followed..

Dear Mr. Peabody(first off Peabody is my first name and I am a woman…just want to clear that up),

I recently made your muffins that were so highly recommended. One blog even said they were the best muffins ever. Well mine turned out horrible. I am an excellent baker so I know that I did nothing wrong, it must be your recipe. I wanted to bring these to a pot luck and so I made a double batch. I wasted $7.30 on making these. Enclosed is my address, I would appreciate a refund for the money I spent on the ingredients. I will take a personal check if that would be easier.

Sincerely,

XXXXX

Funny huh???? If I had a dime for every recipe that didn’t turn out how I wanted I’d be pretty close to rich.

Despite this person’s ranting, I made them the next Sunday for breakfast.

They were just as good as I imagined..

Snickerdoodle Muffins

from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs, at room temperature
¾ tsp baking soda
¾ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp cream of tarter
¾ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 and ¼ cup sour cream
2 and ¼ cups all purpose flour

1 cup sugar and 2 TBSP cinnamon mixed together for rolling

Makes 12 -14 regular muffins, or 60 mini muffins

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees (F). Prepare muffin tins with cupcake papers and lightly grease with cooking spray, or grease pan without liners.

In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, and baking powder and cream of tarter and set aside. Using a stand mixer on medium low speed or by hand, cream the butter and sugar until soft and fluffy (about 3 to 5 minutes). Add vanilla. Add eggs one at a time and mix until each egg is fully combined with the sugar, butter, vanilla mixture. If you are using a stand mixer, turn the mixer to low and add the flour mixture and the sour cream alternately to the egg-butter mixture. Start with the flour and end with the flour. Scrape the bowl occasionally to get all the ingredients combined thoroughly. Do not over mix though. The dough will be firm but not clumpy.

Using an ice cream scoop or soup spoon, scoop out muffin batter one at a time and drop into a shallow bowl filled with the cinnamon sugar mixture. Roll the muffin around in the mixture until it is covered completely in cinnamon sugar.

Once the muffin dough-ball is completely covered in cinnamon sugar, place dough-ball in prepared muffin tin.

Bake them for approx. 12-14 minutes for mini muffins, or 20-22 minutes for normal muffins, or until they are golden brown. Let cool for about 5 minutes before removing from tins to allow the cinnamon sugar crust to firm up. Serve warm.

Warning: The rolling in cinnamon sugar is VERY messy! But VERY worth it.

I also recomened using liners. It was a little hard to get mine out of the muffin pan.

The tops turn out wonderfully crispy..

I hope you enjoy these.. and please don’t ask me for a refund. It was Peabody’s idea!

It has been a VERY long 21 days..

Sorry for the break..

I have a lot of catching up to do. I feel like I could sit down and write 20 posts!

We have officially moved into our new house. And it doesn’t seem like we’ve stopped moving for a second. I finally decided this weekend was going to be the end of it. I just lounged around the house all weekend.

However, I do want to share KITCHEN pictures.. because.. well.. you are the only people that will really care..

This is the old gross apartment kitchen..

And TA DA…. the new CLEAN kitchen…

And man am I in LOVE!! It’s so nice.. and the window..It’s funny how happy a window in a kitchen can make you..

And guess what??? There was even something baked in this magnificently clean kitchen the day we moved in!

Okay.. SO it was the day after we moved in. But Katie offered to come help on Sunday, (since trying to coral 2 little boys doesn’t help much when there are people trying to get up the stairs with a treadmill, and king sized bed, and 2 computer desks, and 2 dressers, and 23,546,687,648 bags of clothes!)

When it came time for her to come help..All I wanted was cookies. (oh and the vinyl’s peeled off the wall the noted when the Haaga family was established!)

She was happy to come make me cookies..

She made me Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies..

They were really really yummy.. We ate a lot of it just like this..

We went through a lot of spatula’s because the boys didn’t understand they couldn’t like it and put it back in..

There is something magically about a window in the oven!

they looked so good right out of the oven..

I’m so glad I have such good friends that will bake me cookies.. (and stand on a ladder with a blow dryer trying to get vinyls off the wall!)

Thank you Katie!

Love You!