bird's eye view

One problem when you are the family photographer is that you don't appear in the photos as often. I am thankful that Andrew is interested in photography and has a natural ability to take a good photo, but I am the one that is home, snapping the photos and spending the time choosing which photos get developed. So, I often have to consciously take the camera off from around my neck and pass it to Andrew saying "Now take some of me."
On Tuesday I was unaware that Andrew was overhead taking a picture of the process...getting the kids to gather around the celebratory cupcakes we made for Andrew passing his exams. I'm so glad he did. This is about our everyday life. Me laying on the floor of the bedroom, setting up the shot and trying to get an okay light for the photo. This is why I choose the bedroom, it has the best natural light and there was no harsh light pouring in because of the time of day. Although I have to say it wasn't the ideal light.

Here is the photo of the kids gathering around our freshly baked strawberry cupcakes.

Here is a close up of the most delicious strawberry cupcakes ever.

And here is the recipe if you are interested. And I have to say that if you enjoy eating cupcakes even a little bit, then you should be interested. I ate the last one last night and was a little sad they were gone.

Strawberry Cupcakes - makes 34 from MarthaStewart.com
(I easily halved the recipe and came out with 12 large and 6 mini)

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cake flour (not self rising)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 cups sugar
3 large eggs plus 1 large egg white (when I halved this I just used 2 eggs)
1 cup whole milk
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 cups finely chopped strawberries

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cream butter and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating after each addition.
2. Reduce speed to low. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the milk/vanilla and ending with dry. Stir chopped strawberries into batter. Scrape sides of bowl. Divide batter among muffin cups, filing each full.
3. Bake cupcakes until testers inserted into centres come out clean, about 20 minutes. When cupcakes are cool, frost. Frosted cupcakes willl keep, covered and refridgerated, for up to 2 days.
For the frosting I made up the same recipe I used for the pink cupcakes posted below. Use a standard buttercream frosting and instead of milk or cream, thin with thawed, strained raspberries. You could also try it with frozen strawberries. My frozen raspberries were just handier.
Edit: my mother-in-law just made these cupcakes and instead of fresh strawberries in the batter, used frozen.

And our carbon fast...
Thursday, March 26th: Switch off lights when you leave a room. Encourage your office or school to do the same.