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In the past month I've made two kinds of cupcakes -- both to rave reviews. I made chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting for the concession stand at a theater production. My daughter had a small role in "The King & I." I packed them in adorable cupcake boxes made from scrapbook paper. To see that technique, visit my scrapbooking blog . They sold for $2.25! I made them again for a scrapbooking crop and I had four requests for the frosting recipe. Recently, I needed a snack for a Girl Scout meeting. I had a lot of quickly ripening bananas and a yellow cake mix. I remembered a recipe for banana cupcakes with a caramel frosting. I made them and most of the Girl Scouts liked them. I took leftovers to the scrapbooking crop the next day and they went fast. The frosting reminds me of a candy I've blogged about before: January Thaw . They are similar in ingredients and cooking method. This is a perfect cupcake to make this time of year. "The Cak...

My family is fortunate that my husband’s grandfather planted eight blueberry bushes in his backyard. Now our front yard blends into it and our daughter often walks down and stands among the bushes picking and eating the fat blue-black berries till she’s full or bored. We don’t usually snack between meals but I don’t mind her grazing at the blueberry bushes. Sometimes she will take an 8-cup lidded Tupperware measuring cup by the handle and pick alongside her grandmother, bringing home berries that I stir into pancake or waffle batter. Recently she brought so many that I made a pie. This year, thanks to their daily picking, we beat the birds to the berries. I’m not a berry pie or cobbler baker or lover (I don’t like the little seeds in my teeth) but I recently made individual (think cupcake-sized) peach “cobblers” – really they were more like pies – for a church bake sale. There was a berry variation listed so I adapted this recipe when I made my full-size blueberry pie. Then our culinar...