Spring has always been a season of wonderful changes for me, and this year is no exception. After several adventurous years, I’m leaving my current job to pursue a new, exciting career opportunity. No, I’m not packing my bag to move to Paris to attend a pastry school (although the thought has crossed my mind once or twice), but the new endeavor will take me to the professional world that I’ve always yearned for. It is with great sadness that I’m bidding farewell to some of the amazing colleagues I worked with for the last few years but I’m looking forward to starting the new chapter of my professional life 🙂

The hopefulness of spring also took me to a place that I haven’t been in a long time – the kitchen. I must admit that food has been put on the back burner for the last few weeks, as my new obsession of sewing has occupied my waking hours (I’m even cheating on this food blog with this new one). But I had to get busy this afternoon to bake some cupcakes that I promised my colleague for her birthday so I grabbed the book, More from Magnolia, went into the kitchen and got started! As I stood in the kitchen and said hello to my pink Kithenaid mixer, I remembered how much I loved and missed baking!

Although my first encounter with Magnolia Bakery last summer was just so-so, I still have an enormous respect for Allysa Torey, the owner of the New York’s Greenwich Village landmark, and I rely on her cookbook frequently for inspiration. The winning recipe for today was Magnolia’s Chocolate Cupcakes and the Cream Cheese Icing – the oldie but goodie that’s sure to satisfy any sweet tooth. My friend requested green tea cupcakes, so I added two tablespoons of the green tea powder to the recipe. I thought the silkiness of the chocolates and the bitterness of green tea will go so well together, but the chocolate overshadowed the green tea flavor! I hope she doesn’t mind!

I’m really happy with how luscious the cupcakes came out! The tanginess of the cream cheese icing went really well with slightly bitter and not-too-overly-sweet chocolate flavor.

I always make the mistake of filling the batter all the way to the top and end up with humongous muffin-tops so I made sure to only fill the batter 3/4 of the way to avoid the overflow this time. The flat surface made putting the frosting so much easier and visually more appetizing! I put tiny flowers made out of pastel fondant to add the touch of spring to the little morsels (aren’t they totally adorable?).

By the way, I was able to make a total of 30 cupcakes from the batch (the recipe said two dozens but I was able to make more) so I was able to bake almost $113 worth of Magnolia Cupcakes ($3.75 x 30 = $112.50) for about $20 I spent on the ingredients!  Maybe I should really think about going into a bakery business!