My Little Buttercup...cake

Titling my entry from a Three Amigos quote. The mark of a good entry for sure.

Tonight I had a meeting for one of my student groups. We brought cupcakes for our snack, and I absolutely, thoroughly enjoyed it, thick frosting and all. Funnily enough, though, it's all part of a crazy week of cupcake topics. They keep coming up in conversation...and not by me!  So while I ate my cupcake tonight, I knew...I knew I was destined to blog about the classic cake in a cup.

The first way that they came up was in discussion with a new friend on campus. We were talking about healthy ways to enjoy snacks, and she mentioned a piece on NPR about healthier versions of fancy cupcakes. The linked print version of the story has recipes for some great, flavorful-sounding cakes. I'm thinking of starting with the espresso and orange ones, but there are lots in there that sound darn near irresistable. I'm also fascinated by the garbanzo bean idea (in the red velvet recipe), which goes nicely with my black bean version of brownies. Several of these have bananas, apples, and oranges in their ingredients as well, so it's a way of adding in some vitamins to your snack. Sign me up.

Then, another friend mentioned that she had heard about diet soda cupcakes, where you mix a cake mix with any kind of diet soda in place of the wet ingredients (similar to the black bean idea). You could do a vanilla cake with diet orange soda, or lemon-lime soda. My cousin's wife had mentioned this idea for cake over the weekend, and then the other friend mentioned doing this in cupcake form. It's like the universe just knows I need more sweets in my life. Thanks, universe!  This one is probably best to avoid if you're looking to get away from those chemicals and artificial sweeteners. I am, definitely, but I'm not 100% adamant about it or anything.

This is only tangentially related, but while I'm on the topic of sweets, I'll mention it. I was at my WW meeting on Monday night, and there's a recipe posted with the oatmeal packages on sale that I'm going to try with other kinds of packaged oatmeal that are less expensive. I have some Kashi vanilla oatmeal that will work fine. The WW recipe says to take the oatmeal pack, add a teaspoon of baking powder and just enough water till the mix is the consistency of cookie dough. Flatten on a cookie sheet and bake at 375 for about 10 minutes. Oatmeal cookie for two points!  You could add some raisins, too, I bet. I need to buy some baking powder next time I am out, and then I'll try it. Report forthcoming.

I've been really really spot-on with my target calories this week. I'm stoked about that! Hope you're all having an equally strong week.