Today is a birthday

Not really. It was yesterday.

We went to the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival, where I saw more yarn and fiber than I've ever seen before in one place. The best part was that they had so many fiber-producing animals there. Goats, sheep, and alpacas. They were all so cute and funny, but the goats were my favorite. I guess because they are smaller than alpacas and smarter than sheep. Nearly anything is smarter than a sheep, I understand.

Then we went home and I made cupcakes while PH went out to 2 local cupcake bakeries and picked up a sample of cupcakes for us to try. In the photo at the top, the pink one is the one I baked (from a boxed mix, not from scratch). As I've mentioned before, I've been very excited about the new cupcake bakery trend, but after trying the bakery in Chicago, I wasn't so sure that these people know what they are doing. But that was just one bakery, and I didn't want to judge them all based on that one. Even though the bakery I went to has been voted best cupcake bakery in the whole world by the cupcake blogging community, and I tried the red velvet cupcake, which was supposed to be the Very Best One produced at this particular bakery, so therefore this should have been the best cupcake in the world, and it tasted like bland cornbread, I did not want to assume that it was all downhill from there.

So we had the cupcake taste test. And the pink one won by a tiny margin, over the peanut butter and jelly cupcake from the store I've already forgotten the name of. The pink one that I baked won hands down over all the other cakes. They all seem to have the same problem as the Chicago cupcake. Heavy cakes with a bread-like texture. Overbaked a little. Tough. Makes them easier to handle, I guess. So now I know I can save my money and stick to my own cupcakes, which are light and airy and spongy.

You can freeze cupcakes after they are baked, before they are frosted. So I bake a whole batch and make it last a really long time since it is just the two of us.