First Post :)

Hi, this is my brand new baking themed blog. Almost every weekend I end up baking some sort of sweets, usually chocolate-themed. In the past few weekends I've made:

• Chocolate cupcakes with Kahlua-chocolate frosting (I followed the instructions on the back of Trader Joe's unsweetened cocoa powder for the cupcakes, and used this frosting recipe:  http://www.food.com/recipe/kahlua-frosting-123640)

This made a lot of cupcakes (about 4 dozen, I believe). Fortunately the frosting seemed to seal off the cake fairly well, so I didn't have the issue of the cupcakes drying out too quickly. Also, the frosting is amazing.

• Banana Chocolate Cake, following this recipe:  http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/2000s/2008/02/chocolate_cake

The walnuts got left out of this. I'm not sure how much they would change it. Also, I forgot to save some of the sugar to be tossed with the dark chocolate and cinnamon mixture. I can't say I regret that; it just made the cake a little more reminiscent of Mexican hot chocolate. The sweetness of the cake itself balanced it out just fine.

• Nutella Sandwich Cookies:  http://abeautifulmess.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/05/nutella-sandwich-cookies-from-emma.html

These weren't especially notable. I will point out that I used whole wheat flower because I had a lot of it and the dough was VERY crumbly. I'm not sure if this was due to the ingredients I used or just the amount of flour called for in relation to the other ingredients.