Cookies, Movies, and Ramblings!

Drawing on my new-to-me tablet pc is amazing! The Intuos4 is great, but I could never get over the disconnect caused by looking at the screen rather than at my own hand when I draw. I picked up a used Fujitsu Lifebook T4215 on Ebay for less than three hundred dollars. Yeah, that hurt. I had to do some extra side work to pay for it. I will have to unload my old laptop when I transfer my files to the new pc. As great as the Intuos4 is, the less sensitive tablet has been so much more productive for me. I've been painting in photoshop and it has been a blast. I even got to doing some sketch studies - something I never did with the Intuos because drawing just wasn't fun with it. I can't imagine how awesom the new Cintiq must be! It uses the same tech as the I4 tablet but has a giant 21 inch screen you can draw on directly.

Now that the weather is trying to cool off I am starting to bake more. One of my favorite recipes is this coffeecake (I don't remember where I got this recipe but I know that my copy is falling apart and I better post this while I still have it written down somewhere): Ingredients: •Topping:•1/2 cup brown sugar•1/4 cup sifted all-purpose flour•1/4 cup butter•1 teaspoon cinnamon - these are just estimates, I usually just throw these together by feel. •Cake:•1 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour (sift before measuring)•2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder•1/2 teaspoon salt•1 egg, beaten•3/4 cup sugar•1/3 cup melted butter•1/2 cup milk•1 teaspoon vanilla extract Preparation:Topping. In small mixing bowl, combine topping ingredients. Blend with fork until crumbly. Set aside.Sift 1 1/2 cups sifted flour with baking powder and salt into a bowl. In a medium bowl, beat together beaten egg and 3/4 cup sugar and 1/3 cup melted butter. Add milk and vanilla. Stir in flour mixture and mix well. ...

As you all know, I love peanut butter. And I love baking. I am always on the lookout for a good peanut butter cake recipe. One that is not too dry, or too dense. Very often peanut butter cake recipes come out like breads. Which is fine and tasty, but not really what I want in a cake recipe. And, as you may or may not know, Sarah just loves Sprinkles cupcakes. So, last week she and Betty were down in Santa Monica and they ended up at Sprinkles Cupcakes. Betty gifted us with half a dozen of their delicious little sugar bombs, two of which were peanut butter chip. Magical! They were so good I just had to see if I could find a recipe for them! So I Googled up the the Sprinkles peanut butter chip cupcake recipe that owner Candace Nelson gave away on a morning talk show some year (or two) ago. It was equally magical! I don't know if it was due to the big globs of chocolate chunks I used, or all that creamy, natural peanut butter, but those were the moistest (yeah, I wrote moist- ...