The 10th recipe we made from Linda’s Collister’s Baking with Kids cookbook and Wee One #2 totally took over! I was so impressed with her! She has really become a mini domestic goddess in training and it’s so sweet to see!!

Chocolate Cupcakes – from Baking With Kids (p. 17) Cake: 1 1/2 cups four 1 tsp baking powder pinch of salt 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa 3/4 cup sugar 7 tbsp unsalted butter, softened 2 extra-large eggs 1/2 cup whole milk Frosting: 3 1/2 oz bittersweet chocolate 1 tbsp light corn syrup 2 tbsp unsalted butter
Preheat your oven to 350F. Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, cocoa and sugar.	This little miss is very precise, dontcha know.
Add the butter to the bowl, and crack your eggs into a small bowl first to be sure you don’t get any shells in your cupcakes (this is especially important when your helper is under 10 years old).	Theeeeen dump them into the mixing bowl.
Now add the milk!	Mix until you have a nice, smooth batter.
Divide the batter between 12 muffin cups – either grease the pan or use cupcake liners. Bake for about 20 minutes and voila!
For the frosting, break up whatever chocolate you like, (just make sure there’s about 3 1/2 oz of it), with the syrup and the butter. Melt it all together over a pan of hot water and mix till it’s all melty.
Wee One #2 attacked all 12 cupcakes with frosting and then covered them in jelly beans, life savers and whatever other candies she could get her little hands on. So cute and way too yummy!

I adore pageants, their extreme cheesy factor doesn’t bother me at all. The bigger the hair and the more glitter on the evening gowns, the better! I eat it right up. So, naturally, I love, love, love the mother of all pageants, Miss America. For the last few years, I’ve gathered my girlfriends to wear plastic crowns and cute dresses and drink champagne and watch the show. This is my first year in the woods – and just my wonderful luck – its also the first year Wee One #2 is interested and oh boy is she interested.

The celebrations around here started early. I was wearing my rhinestone tiara and my biggest Urban Decay lashes at breakfast (just for the record, these are my dailies). Here is Wee One #2 all set for the show about an hour before it started, the one of me was taken in the morning and then I shoveled and cleaned like this. I adore these lashes, they’re so fun.

We baked up some girlie treats last night and watched Miss America together. She was rooting for Miss Oklahoma (she was the 4th runner up), and I was rooting for Miss Nevada, who unfortunately didn’t even make the semi-finals. Our second choices were Miss Hawaii (my choice, she got 3rd runner up), and Wee One #2’s second choice, Miss Nebraska WON! She’s just 17 and carried herself really well through the whole competition.

I have baked all of these creations before, I just decorated them differently for our girlie evening.

These cookies are Martha’s Snickerdoodles (posted about here), minus the cinnamon and sandwiched with leftover ganache from a treat I made for my amazing husband that I’ll post about tomorrow in Marriage Monday. The ganache is the typical combo of 12 oz of good chocolate pieces, 3/4 cup heavy cream and 6 tablespoons butter (heat the cream and the butter until it’s almost boiling, then pour it over the chocolate and mix).

These little babies, of course are just mini chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting and multicoloured coarse sugar. I used the Stir and Bake Chocolate Cake recipe I posted about here.

More chocolate cupcakes, more buttercream frosting. Here I tinted half pink and half purple. I filled the pastry bag half and half so when I piped it, the colours would swirl together. Cute!!

So she now wants to be a beauty queen. So adorable it almost hurts. Here’s some So Very Domestic trivia for you. I was in a beauty pageant when I was 8. I won Miss Sunburst and Miss Photogenic. True story – I still have the trophies to prove it! 😉

6. January 24 – Chicken Pot Pies

5. January 17 – Chocolate Tart (for a happy husband)

4. January 16 -Miss America Chocolate Cupcakes

3. January 16 – Sugar Cookie Ganache Sandwiches

2. January 14 – Cassoulet (French Winter Stew)

1. January 8- Homemade Spaghetti Sauce