Springtime in photos

This weekend was the first weekend of the spring that hasn't been terrible. Weather-wise, that is. As such, I'm going to post pictures from my weekend of lovely weather despite the fact that it's now Tuesday. I meant to do it yesterday, but wouldn't you know, the weather was nice then too. It's actually lovely today also, but I'm making the sacrifice and posting pictures instead of basking in glorious, glorious sunshine. I can't guarantee thoughtful commentary on said pictures though. You might have to wait for winter for that. Or until it gets so hot that I prefer staying inside with air conditioning. Spring just isn't conducive to blogging.

On Saturday I went to the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. It was the perfect day for it. And like all festivals in New York on beautiful days it was insanely packed. Brooklynites are enthusiastic about their cherry blossoms.

Straight up was the only view of cherry blossoms I could get that didn't have hoards of people in the way.

So many people. So many cherry blossoms.

The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens has a number of non-cherry blossoms. I risked my life kneeling to get these shots. Crowds of flower-viewers don't stop for anyone. Then again, I may have tripped over a couple of kneeling nature photographers myself, so I fully sympathize.

After paying the $15 entrance fee and walking amongst the crowds for an hour or so and eating a slice of cherry pie, my friends decided the sunny day would be much less crowded if we just walked around the park for free.

That's what we did. Observe Prospect Park. Try to guess which curly-haired silhouette is me.

On Sunday, it was yet again nice (sometimes New York surprises me). This time I journeyed north on the train upstate to Breakneck Ridge. My friends and I didn't complete the full hike because it's 5 miles mostly uphill and we're whiners, but we did get some lovely views of the Hudson Valley along the way.

This is the only view I seem to have gotten. All of the others have people in front of them. And speaking for myself, hiking is not when I am at my most photogenic. For one thing, putting a backpack on inevitably causes me to hike my thumbs through the loops and jut my elbows out as I like to imagine mounties do. I call it my hiking stance, but it really shouldn't appear anywhere publicly.

That about wraps up my weekend of gorgeous weather. I hope to have at least one more of these before it becomes hot and humid and walking outside makes me feel sweaty and dirty. Not that that doesn't photograph well also.

Here comes the sun

My last baking project was something of a flop. I made some Irish Soda Bread for St. Patrick's Day and it turned out incredibly dry and bland. I mean, I think it's more because Irish Soda Bread is by nature dry and bland than that I messed up, but either way I was ultimately left disappointed. Nevertheless, last night I began a more ambitious project. I again opened the cupcake book from which these cartilaginous bad boys arose. Today is the birthday of the girl who gave that book to me a couple of years ago as a secret santa gift in our office gift exchange, so I wanted to make something special. Interestingly, my secret santa this year gave me a cupcake caddy to better transport my creations to the office. I'm beginning to sense a subtext to their generosity.

After the shark incident took so many hours and caused my kitchen to be shellacked in sugar, I thought I'd try something a little simpler. Something with the same level of cuteness, but that wouldn't require trying to balance Twinkies upright on round surfaces using only frosting as adhesive. Owing to that and to the lovely weather we've been having here that makes it feel like spring, I decided on the sunflower cupcakes. I think they came out rather well, so I'm including a few pictures below:

I guess this really screams summer more than spring. I'm just happy I don't need a coat to walk in the park anymore!

A field of sunflowers! As you can see some of my creations are more exact and some have a more Van Gogh impressionist quality. Those are the ones I did when my arm started to get tired, but frankly, I like them better.

My little sunflowers nestled in their greenhouse. I really just wanted to show off the cupcake caddy. It certainly made subway travel easier than the bootleg aluminum tray I used to use.

For those of you interested in making these yourself (they really are pretty easy--only they have the advantage of looking super hard), I'm including the recipe:

SUNFLOWERS
Yield: 24 flowered cupcakes

24 vanilla cupcakes baked in green paper liners
2 (16-ounce) cans vanilla frosting, divided
Green, yellow, and black food coloring
14-16 regular chocolate cream-filled sandwich cookies (Oreos)
Sugar green leaves (optional--I just happened to find them at the cake decorating store)
2 tablespoons dark-chocolate frosting
6-10 red candy-coated chocolates (M&M's)

1. Tint 1 1/2 cups of the vanilla frosting green with the food coloring. Spread an even layer of the green frosting on top of the cupcakes and smooth. Arrange the chocolate sandwich cookies randomly over the cupcakes, pressing them into the frosting to secure.

2. Tint the remaining vanilla frosting bright yellow with the food coloring. Press out the excess air and seal the bag.

3. Reinforce the corner of each bag with 6 overlapping layers of transparent tape. Pinch the taped corners flat and cut a small V-shape in the corner to make a leaf tip. Pipe yellow-orange frosting around the edge of each cookie to make petals. Pipe another circle of petals just inside the first, slightly overlapping.

4. Tint the chocolate frosting black with the food coloring and spoon it into a sandwich-size zippered bag. Press out the excess air and seal the bag. Snip a 1/16-inch corner from the bag.

For each cupcake, pipe a dot of black frosting on one of the cookies and attach the red chocolate candy to make a ladybug. Pipe a line of black frosting down the center of each ladybug and add a dot for the head and a few dots on the back.

See? What could be easier? Happy nearly spring to all my readers! I hope the weather is as lovely where you are it is here this week.