chocolate chip maple mini cupcakes

With the Christmas festivities coming to an end, 2013 is also closing up. Looking back of what happened during the year, this year had its ups and downs and most probably was one of the most stressful years with the UFE and all. Now that my studies are officially (at least for now) over, everything feels a little different. Given all the holiday festivities, baking is a must, especially with days off which now come a little rare, and so I decided to bake maple mini cupcakes. I rarely decorate my baked goods, but since it's Christmas time, why not?

festive looking mini cupcakes

chocolate chip oatmeal cookies

9/13/13- Updated with recipe- Welcome to the life of a stress baker. Only a few hours away till Day 1 of 3 of this dreadful exam! Clearly, they had to make accountants face some kind of mental trauma before getting those two letters after our names. Anyhow, I decided to make oatmeal cookies to keep myself busy during these hours :)

blueberry boy bait

After almost 3 months on hiatus, I'm back! It's been a very odd summer. I have to admit, studying full time rather than working is different. Although that three letter word haunted us everyday (and still does until next week!), I spent my summer studying, eating and playing with some of my favourite girls. Regardless of next week's outcome, it was a good summer and hopefully all of our hard work will pay off!

Anyhow, enough about the summer, and onto the baked goods! I had frozen blueberries that I never had the chance to bake during the past month and stumbled on this recipe while surfing on smitten kitchen. Deb's recipes never disappoint. With such a whimsical name, it had to be baked! Blueberry boy bait! ;) Who could resist this buttery cake?

blueberry boy bait

chewy oatmeal cookies

It's already June! I can't believe how time just flies sometimes! Busy season is over. Already fully back into school, but it feels quite unreal that I'll be writing my UFE this September! It has been such a challenge this past month adjusting back into study mode. It feels that I have so much more time on my hands, but I just need to figure out how to balance everything out. Anyhow, I completely forgot how I was craving omurice for the past two months! I almost forgot. After seeing on another fellow blogger's post about this amazing dish, I knew that I wanted to make it too. It makes use of one of my favorite condiments: ketchup!

OMURICE <33

I also made oatmeal cookies recently! As requested, you'll find the recipe in here ;). Please do excuse the instagram pictures. Papa unfortunately took back his camera so cheers to filtered pictures for now! These are one of my favorite cookie recipes! My love for oatmeal is truly unconditional. And so, I love all the rest of its by-products.

my perfect blueberry muffin

What an ambitious title I've got here! Over the years, there's one type of muffin that I could never get fed up of and that is my dearest blueberry muffin. Most probably overated, but I love them! I have tried different variations of this muffin, with oil, butter and lemon, but I don't think I've ever had my "perfect" blueberry muffin until now! I had one that I overused because my mom loved it, but I was getting fed up of that same old blueberry muffin. So I present you what I consider as my perfect blueberry muffin, at least for now.

chocolate chip marshmallow cookies

Aside from all the scary Halloween stuff, this period of time reminds of me candies and chocolate (and everything sweet!). Post midterm deserves some more baking time! :) Especially with work coming up!! This time, I decided to make a different type of chocolate chip cookie.

the cookie that wished it could be s'more

pumpkin spiced applesauce muffins

After a zillion of hours watching this drama, I've fully gotten my dose of kdrama that I needed. Midterms were quite something this semester! It's especially hard to get back on track after summer vacations. I'm not yet in my "work" mode, but that's over with work coming up in less than a week! Anyhow, enough rambling and onto the baking! After receiving amazing pumpkin spice mix from Cars, I decided that I needed to make something with it, especially with all those pumpkin recipes out there. The only problem was that I didn't have canned pumpkin puree. So the closest thing I can get to pumpkin spice muffins was pumpkin spiced applesauce muffins.

spiced applesauce muffins

apple fritter muffins

I really love autumn. Although the trees are getting ready to go to sleep for winter, everything else is amazing! The weather is getting chilly enough to wear boots and scarves. Coffee shops are serving their seasonal pumpkin spiced lattes. And best of all, APPLE PICKING time. Seriously, what is there not to love about this awesome season?

apple fritter muffins

pb oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

Now that's a killer long name for a cookie. It's really random how I bake these cookies. A good friend of mine brought us these amaziiiiing store bought peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. After one, I just wanted another. Knowing all the bad stuff in the store bought ones, I decided it would be better to make my own healthy version of it. There's something about pairing peanut butter and chocolate that just mind-blowing! I love pb & jelly, but with chocolate.. It's a whole new level of yumminess if that would exist.

when chocolate goodness meets PB awesomeness

banana muffin comeback

I am still alive! And doing just fine. It's the flu season and I might have caught something. Let's just hope its allergies. On the bright side, I did buy a lot of bananas over the week. Like, when I mean a lot, see for yourself here. Ever since my parents came back from their trip from Cuba, our house has not been out of bananas. They are such a great fruit! (awesome for eating, baking or cooking) I think it's the perfect food.

On that lovely picture, you can see that there were some on the far right that were super ripe, almost black. I think those are truly the best for baking. And no worries, no bananas were harmed in the making of these muffins. (well the fulfilled their banana destiny ;)

simple banana muffins