Set at three hundred and fifty degrees...

I love to cook. When I have a hard day at work, I usually stop off at the grocery store, pick up a few items, and have a field day with one of the cookbooks in my library. This worked out well when the Teach was my housemate, as she also loves to cook. I did play around with food blogging, but... I don't know enough. And it got annoying.

It's still fun taking pictures of food in restaurants though. More on that later.

Anyway, I can feel it. It's a Saturday of a holiday weekend (all though I'm sitting here in the lab) and the clock is ticking toward five o'clock. It's time to do something wild. Party. Go Crazy.

Break out the KitchenAid from the box it's been sitting in since I moved a week ago. I didn't mean it, baby, I'm sorry.

I'll be making three, maybe four baked goods tonight, depending on how ambitious I get. The first is Paula Deen's Red Velvet Cake, for three reasons.

1. Sideshow has about four bottles of vegetable oil in his house, and we need to find ways to use it up.
2. Who needs clear arteries?
3. It's so PRETTY!

I'm almost curious as to what would happen to her recipe if I changed the oil to that 'healthy' (read, run right through your GI tract) oil, used splenda, and used egg substitute. But what would be the point? Plus, my last baking experience with splenda was not a positive one. So half of her recipe will become cupcakes.

What will I do with the other half? Haha! You'll have to wait and see.

No just kidding. I'm making Tie Dye Red Velvet (Duh) Cheesecake, though this one I am lightening up a little. Again, the colors are pretty. Are we seeing a pattern?

The third recipe is another one I found from TasteSpotting (see link bar to right), submitted from a blog called Vanilla Garlic. I heart TasteSpotting. It is fabulous. Vanilla Garlic (the blog) is pretty good too. And the recipe is Maple Bacon Cupcakes.

I'm too curious. I can't help it. And the recipe only makes six.

Finally, the fourth course (!) will be a dozen or so grasshopper cupcakes. I don't know what the recipe is because I haven't decided yet. But no grasshoppers will be harmed in the making of this delicious treat.

Happy Saturday!