Chocolate Mint Cupcakes

I love Gordon Ramsay, and although his new show Master Chef is terrible, I watch it because he is in it. Yesterday, after watching the cupcake challenge episode, I felt inspired to comb through my cupcake books and try a new recipe. (It also helps to know that I am currently on a 5-day Labor Day weekend and can finally get to some of the items on my fun to-do list.)

I found a recipe in one of my books for After Eight cupcakes which have a very dense, but not super sweet chocolate cake with a mint butter cream frosting. 

I am not sure if I think the color of the frosting makes it more or less appetizing. I think that perhaps I put too much frosting on my cupcakes because I always have to scrape the bowl for the last one. Cupcake recipes never have the correct cake to frosting ratio in my opinion.

So Jealous

As a child, one of my favorite movies was The Little Mermaid. My sister and I would have contests in the pool to see who could best swim like a mermaid; the winner got to pretend to be Ariel and the loser was a nameless mermaid friend or sister. I constantly sang the songs from the movie around the house, to my family's annoyance. However, I think what most captivated me was the ability of the animators to draw sparkles. I practiced hours upon hours, trying to draw sparkles, specifically the sparkly dress that Ariel wears at the end of the movie. 

I love that dress and have always wanted a pale sparkly dress all my own. To this day, I have yet to master the art of sparkle drawing and do not own a sparkly dress.

All of these memories resurfaced the other day when I was watching the Emmy Awards.  I am watching Ryan and Julianna's painfully awkward red-carpet coverage and what did I see...

Claire Danes in a Ariel-esque sparkly dress!  I would never wear that dress; I don't think I will ever go anywhere that requires such formal attire but I still want it! Although, I like Claire Danes much more now. I imagine that she also loves The Little Mermaid and chose that dress for the same reasons that I would have.