Bought/made with love

I LOVE Christmas. And I LOVE shopping for other people. Screw shopping for me, my real joy is shopping for other people.

Moving on, my co-worker and I decided that instead of buying a gift, we would cook for each other. She is an awesome chef and I'm an OK-baker. So this past Friday, we exchanged food. She made a DELICIOUS Parmesan chicken with mashies (I LOVE mashies) a top of a salad with lemon-y dressing. It was sooooo good. Like I was holding back from licking my plate.

This is my plate halfway through. I tackled this immediately and I remembered to take a pic only halfway through. Whoops...

And this is my plate after. All clean!

My co-worker loves red wine so I wanted to incorporate dessert and red wine. After five minutes of googling, I realized that red wine and dessert just don't go together. Butttttt, after thinking for another five minutes, I googled 'red wine cupcakes.' Cue the music....hallelujah!

I found a recipe for Red Wine Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. I didn't attempt the frosting - I usually mess up frosting because I have to mix it by hand because I don't have a fancy mixer. Boo. I buy the frosting from the store.

These babies were actually really easy to make. You mix all the ingredients, pop them in the oven and voila...all done!

Excuse the cupcake pan. These are probably as old as me, but I promise they're clean. I stabbed this cupcake with a knife...I couldn't find toothpicks.And here are all the cupcakes, in all their yummy-ness. I wasn't sure about the red wine but it actually turned out well. The taste wasn't over powering at all - it left a nice little tang in your mouth.