Cinnamon Sugar Cake

February is a wonderful month, full of wonderful things like purple, amethysts, winter, overly commercialized holidays....and my birthday! Impending doom (i.e. boards) or no, I had to make a cake for my birthday earlier this week. What's a birthday without cake? I am on an upswing in terms of my love of my birthday. I liked it when I was quite young, then my birthday spirit took a nose dive throughout jr. high & high school. During college, birthdays started to make a very slow comeback....coincident with my renewed interest in baking. I made a cinnamon sugar cake with brown sugar cinnamon buttercream frosting from a recipe on The Pastry Affair, with a few substitutions.

No, one is never too old for birthday candles. 

Magic Microwave Nutella Cake

     This February marks an interesting time in my educational career. In two weeks, I will be done with classroom-based learning for the foreseeable future. While I am excited to begin third year in a few months, this will be the end of an era of my life. It will be the end of my comfort zone entirely as I have been in a classroom since I was 3 or 4 years old; indeed, I have done very little else. We got our third year schedules this past week. The student lounge when this occurred was a scene straight from the past. Everyone was eager to see what they got and compare with others, just like getting schedules in jr. high & high school. For the most part, I am pleased with my schedule. Happily I have the rotation I am least excited about and causes me the greatest anxiety first; I will be glad to get it out of the way. This is a difficult time in the course of medical education, mostly because it requires a great deal of self-discipline in the face of anxiety and undue stress given the increasing emphasis of board scores on residency applications. While I can feel the anxiety about the boards and beginning third year mounting with each passing day, I am determined to focus on one day at a time and try not to let the pressure to study all the time eat away at other areas of my life like eating real food and getting off my butt for a little while each day. On the whole, though, I am eager to get through these last hoops of classroom education and get into the wards. I am approaching third year with a somewhat open mind about what I ultimately want to go into, but it will be interesting to see how my specialty preference changes throughout the year.

Merry Christmas!

If you haven't yet entered the obligatory holiday-induced hyperglycemic state, or if you feel like baking up some cookies, then try out these super simple almond refrigerator cookies.

Pin It

Peppermint Mocha Cookies

It seems med school is determined to prevent me from posting about pie during the appropriate time for pie (i.e. Thanksgiving!). Last year, I was finishing up 2 months straight of weekly exams and this year, as fate would have it, there was yet another exam standing in my way of sharing my pies. Oh well, there's always next year...or maybe not. I don't envision third year being any more benevolent in the time department.

Fortunately, I've taken some prophylactic measures to prevent the same thing from happening at Christmas--mainly, I decided to ignore my imminent exam, turn on Michael Buble's new Christmas album, and bake some dang cookies!

How cute are all those dogs in sweaters?

Earl Grey Tea Mini Cupcakes with Honey Buttercream Frosting

Lately, I increasingly wish I could just curl up on the couch with some tea and a good book or one of those movies you watch over and over because it somehow brings you comfort. Maybe it's the chill in the air lately or how suddenly the sun is blazing through the window at 6:30 in the morning or perhaps the passing of Halloween signaling an official entrance to the holiday season. The habitual Starbucks drinkers in class now arrive with cheery red and white holiday cups and stores are shamelessly pushing their Christmas merchandise (though perhaps less so than those stores that were selling Christmas decor in Sepetember!). Regardless the reason, these mini-cupcakes are sure to brighten up a chilly day.