Soft Pretzels & Cupcake Decoration

This afternoon, my mother asked me if I would make cupcakes! The sentence wasn't even completely out of her mouth by time time I has gotten on Pinterest, looking for a recipe. Unfortunately, the END of her sentence was tell me there was a box mix and icing on the counter in the kitchen. A box! I didn't get to play with flour, I had to use eggs, and I don't think she fully understands my need to lick the bowl and eat every other spoonful of raw batter! I decided to do SOMETHING creative since all the baking was basically already done for me, and dug through my (vast collection of) cookie cutters until I found one that I liked. I tried painting inside it with food colouring first, but the icing was moving around too much. I finally switched to painting the cookie cutter and stamping the outline on the icing. I think I like the modified version even better!

Our neighbor made dinner for us tonight because she had too many vegetables for just one person. It was SO delicious- chicken, rice, and a vegetable dish with zucchini, summer squash, and onion. Of course, we can't send the plate back empty, and since I had been deprived of baking earlier today, I jumped at the chance to make something. It didn't take very long to pick this pretzel recipe, and I immediately got to work. I was a little worried about the yeast since both packets we had in the house were expired- one in 2012 and one few months ago- but they ended up working out just fine! My biggest difficulties were keeping the dough in a rope after it was dipped in the baking soda solution- it kept tearing apart! I finally started making the pretzel shape and putting it on the tray, then painting the baking soda on. It seemed to work pretty well!