oh valentine oh valentine, how lovely and meaningless. how feathery and light. how contrite and vague..... how i love the day of love and its nonsensical ways. how everything is coated in red, and covered with hearts. how the population of dying flowers has increased, how acne has started to appear and little boxes of chocolates have littered our landfills...oh how romantic. i love you, today, and everyday, but especially today. today i mean it more. today i show it more. or, was it yesterday? hmmm i can't remember. one of these days i simply just feel it more. how bizarre. for those true believers, i do not mean harm, for those young lovers, no offense. for myself, its just silly. for love is, a four lettered word.....


it was the bottom of the last inning, in the the last quarter of the last minute, and the score was tied. it was a bloody battle, and alas....... pizza 1 cupcake 0.

how can it be?? i will share. in our home, our kitchen is in prime time. its high season, and the business of making foods exploding with love is the name of the game. my darling dennis is experimenting with his own spin on delicious home made doughs. filled with delicious goodness and made with his own personal variety of love. his pizzas are for lack of a better word,are just down right amazing. he carefully selects his toppings, and watches them bake, as to not over do it. its art. i on the other hand, am gettin' down and dirty with the cupcakes. its a fine art, practiced by many, and flat out fun. home made edibles is what were talking about here folks. straight up.

so, it was a fine january day. the weather was unusually warm. we were flingin' dough, sugar, honey, pepperonis, butter, everything was all over the place. our kitchen is just only so big.... i pulled out my cakes and they were gorgeous. amazing. perfection. little vanilla beauties. the icing, well, that turned out to be my downfall.....




brace yourself, for the following photo, is what appears to be raw meat slathered across some unassumingly harmless cupcakes. it looks even worse in photo. i tried to save the little ones, but alas they met their demise in the trash. i tried everything. i followed every last instruction. i read carefully, but i still managed to make raw red meat looking, clumpy, nasty icing. i even tried to put them in the fridge, but that only made it worse...


so, there you have it. my most failed moment in cupcake history, to date. i have no shame, for i know, with every mistake, you learn. and in all fairness, it was a new recipe. after ditching the little raw meat babies, i ran out to the store and ended up with 24 perfect new ones. from scratch, of course. this time i followed my old stand by recipe.

and in fairness to any competitiveness that i may possess, here's the pizzas, that i have to say taste even better than they look, and damn, they look good.....




so, in the end, it was a victory for pizza lovers everywhere. it was gobbled up in minutes. everybody loved it. and my little failed cakes, found a happy home in a landfill somewhere, hopefully they got picked apart by whatever lurks in those places. and, what have we learned? our kitchen, much like our home is full of love. we want to share it with you. because if you can't taste the love, you ain't got much.

happy (late) valentines, my true believers.....xo