So for those of you who haven’t been keeping up with my Twitter/IM/meatspace shenanigans, I’m officially an independent woman. Yep.

I graduated from the Colorado School of Mines on December 18, 2009 in a ceremony that bored rather than brought me to tears. Truly, it wasn’t a terrible sentimental occasion but I couldn’t help but feel occasional tides of joy rising through the whole class. There would occasionally be a frission type of effect; everyone would suddenly be fighting off broad grins and giddiness.

Part of my overall happiness and lack of apprehension is that I’ve landed a position with one of two FPGA companies in existence.  My internship (since August) at Xilinx in Longmont, CO has evolved into a full-time position complete with cubicle, salary, benefits, and an ID badge.  I feel kind of important on my good days.  (If you’d like to know my work email or phone number, let me know and I’ll pass them on.)

If you’re unfamiliar with Xilinx, they are a fab-less semiconductor company as far as technological stock trends.  At the heart of it, they design FPGAs, which are semi-mystical pieces of transistor technology that have a supremely wide array of applications –including aerospace (helloooo NASA!).

To wrap up my new pose in life, I’ve moved on up to Denver, just north of the LoDo area.  I think Park Avenue divides LoDo and Five Points, putting us in the southernmost edge of Five Points.  The girl who’s been my roommate for over a year now, L., has moved with me and we’re ecstatic about our industrial-style loft.  Trust me, we will be inviting you over to hang!

My grandmother visited not long ago, coinciding with the day I promised to help my sister bake for a tea party that she wanted to have. This, ODDLY ENOUGH, sparked my following cupcake-baking-flurry. Everything was delicious!

The menu included cucumber sandwiches, lemon cupcakes, scones, faux clotted cream, grape jellyroll, and chocolate-dipped strawberries.

What’s a nerd to do when faced with a power outage and heaps of very-packable snow?  HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

There are more pictures to this but you’ll have to contact me to get them. They involve ghetto Leia costumes and serious laugh-value. All these were taken back in April? Maybe?

Cruising right along on my cupcake adventures, I present MOAR CUPCAKES!

These little beauties were also initially inspired by Martha Stewart.  I used her recipe for Meyer Lemon cupcakes (filled with lemon curd!) and they turned out ridiculously well.  Beyond my expectations for sure.

Basically, they consist of a lemon cake with a lemon curd filling, very tart.  My own ideas were the little meringue cookies added via home-made sweetened whipped cream.  To a certain extent these could be assembled using bought materials: cake mix, lemon curd (possibly), Cool Whip, and meringue cookies.  I had an absolute blast making all the pieces myself, however.

To use Martha’s enormo recipe though, I had to halve it.  From 7 eggs to.. 3.5?  I used 3 whole eggs and an extra white leftover from making the curd (with only yolks) and the meringues (with only whites) and they turned out fine.  The batter style was still a creamed-style cake but baked a bit differently from the chocolate cake previously.  They rose to high domed peaks in the oven and promptly fell flat while cooling.  I don’t think this is a mistake because the picture in the cookbook showed very flat cakes.

I ran into a bit of a problem with my own errors while baking these in a couple of respects.  First, I was very poor at judging how full the tins were (supposed to be 3/4 full) so many of my cupcakes were very very small gems of delicious.  This also increased the number of mini cupcakes I ended up making.  I had to re-use my one mini-cupcake pan 3 times.  Second, while pulling them out of the pan to cool on a rack, I ended up pulling the paper away from the side on a few of them.  While it finished cooling (and shrinking,) it would pull the rest of the way away from the paper on all the sides, very disheartening.  HOWEVER, they were still very delicious and nobody seemed to mind!

To fill these, I waited for them to cool and cut cones from the centers, discarding the tips of the cones, and plopping the tops back over the lemon curd.  My sister helped me make and assemble all the pieces like a BOSS.  I tried using a filling tip for them but I think they were just too small for it to be effective.  Perhaps not and I have no idea how to use a filling tip.

Next, I dolloped whipped cream and plopped a meringue cookie on each.  The meringue cookies were very simple: 1/4 cup of powdered sugar per egg white and I used a bit of cream of tartar.  The lemon curd was from Martha’s cookbook and the whipped cream was simply sweetened to taste and flavored with vanilla.  The only slightly innovative thing I tried here was assembling them early and letting the meringue soften.  I think the crispy cookies was more fun to eat but softened tasted more like lemon meringue pie, which was pretty awesome.  All in all, these were a definite success.  My sister is asking for S’mores next!