Fillin' Good

Last week when we were at Babycakes I was the only one stupid/nice enough to let everyone else have a taste of my dessert. I wanted to get more treats to try later but since they would have to sit in the car during the Sparks' game as well as the drive home, it wasn't a good idea. I did not get a bite of the cookie sandwich my niece chose, but I heard it was delicious.

Today I made cookie sandwiches of my own (sort of). I did all the work but I used the recipes my favorite bakers to do so. The cookies were from The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. She is a genius and I cannot believe I have only made four recipes from it so far. These are the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever made. I slacked a bit on the uniform sizes so I yielded eighteen instead of a dozen, and they were still on the larger side. Actually there was a nineteenth cookie that no one is supposed to know about so shhhhhhh.

After I had the excellent cookies, it was time for the amazing icing. I already knew I would use the "Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Icing" from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World (my vegan she-roes, Isa and Terry!). It was my first time making half the recipe so I had to get down with some fractions before I started. I was good until I needed 1/8 cup of soymilk. I had to look that one up. For everyone else who didn't know, 1/8 cup= 2 TBSP. I penciled it in for next time (and there will be a next time). The icing turned out just as lovely as when you make the full recipe and it was the perfect amount to fill the cookie sammiches.

We each had one full sammich, half before dinner and half after. The ones we had after dinner were even better because they were nice and cold from the fridge. Just in time for summer!

p.s. I'll have to try the original Babycakes recipe to see how these compare. I already had everything I needed to make them this way.

Let's Go Sparks!

Last night we went to the home opener for the L.A. Sparks, it was a blast! We left on time for once and got there early enough to get the free foam fingers and t-shirts (limited to 5000 so I thought we might miss that). We even had time to make a quick stop at Babycakes. It would have been quicker but someone (me) forgot to check the cross streets so we had to make a big loop before we could get back to the $3 parking a block away from the store.I think that might be the cheapest parking I've seen downtown. The vanilla brownie cupcake was delicious. Everything looked so yummy, but we'll have to go back another time to try it all out.

After we got all of our free stuff we went to our seats. Even though we just bought the tickets last week I forgot how good they were, fourth row courtside good. This is what I love and unlove about going to Sparks games. You can get extremely good seats for a fraction of what you would pay to sit there if the other L.A. team was playing, and they are almost never sold out. Luckily there was a great crowd for the home opener. I hope it stays that way all season. We sat a few seats over from someone who is a huge Sparks fan (literally and figuratively), Tiny "Zeus" Lister, aka "Debo", from Friday. His daughter is adorable.

Sparks got the first points on the board but were quickly answered by the Mystics. It was a great game to watch. I was nearly hoarse before the first quarter ended, and if you don't know, WNBA quarters are shorter than NBA quarters.My favorite players (Tina Thompson and Candace Parker) were on their game and the new ladies were too. I was especially impressed by Kristi Toliver and Ticha Penicheiro. It was the first win of this season, let's keep going.

I was cheering and yelling like a fool. I even made it on the jumbotron during one of the breaks. My niece was sitting three seats over from me and started to cry because I was on it and she was not. We tried for the rest of the night to get back on it, but we didn't. I guess we'll just have to keep going back until we make it.

p.s. Today is my veggie-versary: ten years meat free!