First Post

Caramel Macchiato Cupcake - 6/2012

So for my first post, I decided to use one of the most photogenic baked goods I ever made.  This was a dark chocolate cake, with a caramel core (the caramel sauce was store-bought I'll admit), coffee buttercream frosting schmear underneath a regular whipped vanilla buttercream, drizzled with more caramel and sprinkled with bit of sea salt and raw sugar.  The inspiration for this was the Starbucks Caramel Macchiato.

Now that that's out of the way.. I bake things and I often take photos of them.  If you want to see an ongoing album of things I've made, visit my album on Facebook.  I also pin things I want to make, and you can view all my boards on Pinterest.

In fact, my favorite Sunday morning activity is curl up on the couch with my laptop and a good pot cup of coffee, a lap full of kitten, and look at things on the internet that I want to bake - either that or research trips I want to take.  At the moment I'm planning a trip to Seattle in September to run "Beat the Blerch" and a family trip with my parents at Christmas to spend the holiday in Puerto Rico.  And eyeballing an almond, amaretto and raisin (Blech to the raisin, but it would be SO good if I substituted dried cherries) cupcake from The Caked Crusader.  Although its not always baked goods - sometimes it's just food in general.  I'm supposed to be cohosting a dinner party in a few weeks with a friend of mine who brings out my super competitive nature to be the best cook - so I think its safe to say our dinner guests will be the ones to come out winners.  

I'm also planning a whiskey tasting party this summer for my birthday as an excuse to hire the fabulous team from Julep to lead the tastings - and as an excuse to add a bunch of bourbons, whiskeys and ryes to my bar collection.  I'm really geeked for this party.

Otherwise, I'm a 40ish single female with 2 cats and I work in the advertising industry combining my passion for data and customer experience into some cool projects for cool clients and with some pretty awesome coworkers.  I play sand volleyball 7 months out of the year and the "LoneStar" part of the blog name is related to the fact that I'm originally from Texas and some little part of my heart will always be in Austin.  Fortunately, my parents live there and I have every excuse to go back a few times a year.  I also just bought a little tudor home, in an area of town known for Dible tudors, so I'm also constantly plotting (and plodding) through home improvement projects.

So now that you know what I'm up to, you can assume I'll be writing about all these things. So if you want to read about food, bourbon, travel, parties, nesting, marketing, cats, sand volleyball, and sometimes technology, you've come to the right blog.