Cinnamon Chocolate Cupcakes

So this weekend I made cupcakes. There wasn't much in the house to play around with, and I wasn't feeling particularly inspired by any one recipe anyway, but I just wanted to bake something. So, after looking through countless cupcake recipes that all looked delish, and rejecting them because they called for sour cream, yoghurt, buttermilk and etc, I finally found a recipe that called for basic, simple ingredients that I had at home. Got the basic cupcake recipe here, and, was inspired by a bar of expensive but absolutely delish Green and Black's Maya Gold Dark Chocolate, to add a little something to the recipe. The bar is 55% cocoa, so it's not extremely dark, which is nice, and its scented with a light spice mix of nutmeg and cinammon, and a hint of orange flavour. Check out their gorgeous website here. So I added about a tablespoon of ground cinnamon to the recipe, and the hint of spice in the cake was just totally excellent. I topped them with a dark chocolate frosting of butter, cocoa powder and icing sugar, with a half-tablespoon of cinnamon for good measure, and it was just yummy. I really love the way these turned out. :)

a few of my 'favourite' things

Oh my gosh.
I went to Spotlight today, and I saw the most gorgeous plates and such! Not the kind for serving dinner on, but random pretty pieces that I an seriously lusting over.


First there were these nice stripey long plate-things: so pretty! these were really what caught my eye first, simply because they are so colourful. I'm not generally a pastels person, but these are nice. I think they're about $30 though. Whoever said that Spotlight was cheap.

Then there were these pretty, swirly-designed plates; I really like the black one. It's not very clear in the picture, but the pattern is in light blue and light olive, against the black and white it's terribly nice and sophisticated. The white and blue one's not bad either, but I do like the black one better. The only thing is that they're both much too big.

BUT! What I really, really, REALLY fell in love with were these 'frilly' plates:

I can't decide which of them i prefer: the cake stand or the long frilly-edged plate. siigh. I want them! but they cost tooo much for my impoverished wallet to afford.

there were also other really cool cake stands and stuff:

like this cupcake tree...

and this cake stand, decorated with tiny cakes:

And then there were these cool retro-esque colanders, in all the coolest colours. I think they'd go pretty well with whatever kitchenaid you happen to have...


I want some money to go kitchen applicance-shopping!