Allergen Free Chocolate Cupcakes

In planning my visit to Utah, there was a crucial detail that I neglected to factor in:

It snows there.

Sometimes, it snows a lot.

I didn't experience blizzards or anything while I was there, but we did have a couple of days where we elected to stay home, rather than drive out in the snow.

So we had to come up with some things to do at home. Bear in mind that, if Kevin had his way, we would have just sat in the family room watching Cars in our pajamas for three days straight. But I came up with some other activities.

First, I had the kids model their Halloween costumes for me. That took up some time. As you

can see, Sammie took the dog thing very seriously and decided this was a good time to start drinking out of a bowl on the floor.

Then, Melanee suggested I take some time and bake cookies with her kids.

I suggested we do cupcakes, instead because I could cross another one off of my list.

Plus, it meant Sammie and I had an opportunity to dress up in our aprons. I was fortunate enough this Christmas to receive three aprons. Apparently, great minds think alike. And every one of them is super-cute. The one I am wearing in this picture was given to me by Shane and Maria, and Maria actually made it. It's hard to tell, but it is covered in cherries and, smart woman that she is, Maria made the part that goes around my neck adjustable, which is good, since that is the part of the apron that tends to be a bad fit on me. I am a big fan of Sammie's chef's hat, also.

If you're wondering, no one in the family is allergic to eggs or milk or nuts, which this cake is

free from. However, this is a great recipe to make with a young child for some key reasons:

It doesn't require any fancy ingredients.

It doesn't ask for any complicated procedures. In fact, we made these cupcakes in one bowl.

It doesn't call for any eggs. So, I guess it's also a good recipe to use if

you don't have any eggs in your house and you still want to make cupcakes.

This last part was particularly important because Sammie wanted to do EVERYTHING by herself, from adding ingredients to mixing batter to filling the tins. I can only imagine how it could have gone if eggs were involved. And she is a pretty hard person to say no to. At least, she is for me. And I feel, since I am not in charge of her discipline, and I want her to like me, that I shouldn't have to say no to her as often as her parents do. This attitude got me into a little bit of trouble with her mother, particularly because the batter is extremely thin, and it dripped all over the place when she tried to fill the liners. After we baked them, we discovered that some of the cupcakes had batter on the outside of the liners, which baked like normal and made for an interesting look.

But I thought they turned out pretty good, despite the fact that they contained no eggs or dairy. And, yes, I allowed Sammie to help me dust them with powdered sugar and cocoa, which is why they look like cocoa exploded on them. Here is the recipe. The link also adds a frosting recipe, but I thought they were fine without frosting.

After we finished the cupcakes, we decided to go outside and build a snowman. Sammie and I began the snowman together, while Melanee was inside dressing Kevin for the snow, and, apparently, fighting with him over this pair of oversized pink boots he did not want to wear, which is how he ended up wearing his tennis shoes, and why he did not stay outside for very long.

I decided initially that the snowman would be the same size as Sammie. However, by the time Melanee and Kevin came outside, the snowman was just barely at Sammie's knees, and my enthusiasm was already beginning to wane. Fortunately, Melanee decided that this snowman needed to look different from your average snowman whose body is big while his head is small. We went for the big head/small body approach, instead.

Not unlike this handsome gentleman on the right. He was slightly more thrilled to be outside than this picture would indicate, but his feet were probably freezing in their little canvas shoes, and he refused to put his thumbs in the thumb place, so he was without opposable thumbs for the moment. He kept trying to take his mittens off so that he could use his thumbs, but, of course, that made his hands cold. Then his nose started to run. Needless to say, he didn't last long.

After Melanee put Kevin down for a nap, we came back out to finish our snowman. For those of you who don't know my sister, she is something of a perfectionist. And it rears its ugly head at the oddest of times, like when it's approximately 20 degrees outside and we're trying to put a face on a snowman. We were very happy with the results, especially when we were back inside and our feet had the chance to thaw a little.

After some ethical debates, Melanee broke some branches off the tree behind her house for the snowman's arms. I would guess that the HOA would not be particularly pleased if they knew she'd done that. However, since George is on the HOA board, maybe they will cut her some slack.

It is hard to tell from this tiny picture, but the snowman's eyes are pistachio shells that we colored with a Sharpie. His nose is a baby carrot (at Sammie's insistence), and his teeth are dried black beans, which made us giggle as we thought about Mr. Heyman, the gym teacher on Seinfeld who had "little baked bean teeth."

Here's Sammie with our completed snowman. As you can probably tell, Kevin

donated his hat to the cause while he was blissfully sleeping in his warm bed, and the next day, Melanee bought him another one. We were extremely proud of our snowman in his scarf and prison snitch hat.

But we were extremely cold and tired, which is what led Sammie to flop down in the snow and make a snow angel. I think.

I have also included this picture of Brooklyn. She had already returned to California when the snow day took place, so I don't have any pictures of her playing in the snow. However, I love this picture of her for many reasons:

-She is so darn cute.

-When this picture was taken, she had just received a sweater dress from my parents--which she put on over the sweater she was already wearing--as well as a shopping cart, which she began to push. She is also wearing a hat which one of her Haynie aunts crocheted for her. Separately, each piece is fine. Altogether, though, it sort of makes her look like a tiny bag lady. And if you think I'm terrible for suggesting that, know that her parents said it first.

Also, they left the shopping cart at Melanee's house until they went home to California, but they came back the next day. It took Brooklyn a while to warm up to being at Melanee's house. I was trying to remind Brooklyn about the shopping cart by pushing it around for her. However, she took that to mean that I wanted the shopping cart for myself (because my nieces and nephew seem to think of me as part of their peer group), and she spent the next half hour looking at me suspiciously. When she finally started playing with the shopping cart, she'd race past me with it crying, "Nope! Nope!" It was about the cutest thing I have ever seen, except that she wouldn't let me come near her.

Fortunately, her dad let me bribe her with candy, and then we were friends again.