Did I mention I'm also a newbie cupcake baker/decorator?

Most of my baked goods projects have been fruit breads (applesauce raisin bread, cranberry pecan bread) although I have made a few pies from Ken Haedrich's books (Cranberry Pear Maple Nut Pie for Thanksgiving!). I even went through a yeast bread phase back in the early 90s during the first Gulf War (again, when Bantam published Ken Haedrich's COUNTRY BAKING book).

Recently, however, I fell madly for Karen Tack's and Alan Richardson's two cupcake decorating books, HELLO, CUPCAKE and WHAT'S NEW, CUPCAKE! I spotted them online, avidly watched their videos on Amazon, and finally got a chance to meet them at an event at Barnes & Noble Lincoln Center--a bookstore that will be very much missed! One of my favorite cupcakes from the 2nd book is a fantastic creation: the Lo Mein cupcake. Here's a photo of my first effort-- not bad!

You tint commercial white icing with yellow food coloring and a bit of cocoa, then pile "noodles" all over the top of a cupcake. Then you take a green fruit chew or Tootsie Roll, split it partway with a sharp knife, and put a blob of green icing at each end of the two split pieces. Finally, you dip those blobs in green-tinted nonpareils--it's totally believable as broccoli! A few snips of pink and green Twizzlers for roast pork and scallions, and you've got the sweetest Chinese food this side of Paradise....

Karen and Alan are so amazingly inventive when it comes to cupcake decorating. Their newsletter this month has the greatest football cupcakes, so if you are planning to have anyone over for the playoffs or the SuperBowl, you've got to try them. Here's the link:

http://www.hellocupcakebook.com/Hello__Cupcake__Club.html

They are GREAT!