TV, or Yes, Theresa, I am a Real Person

What happens when your pickle and ice cream cupcakes get written up in People magazine?  It turns out that you get to be on local TV (the clip is at the bottom of this post)!

If you are not from St. Louis (or even if you are) you may not recognize the dude on the left in this photo - it's Tim Ezell from the Fox morning show.  The lovely lady on the right is my prego friend Lori who got to come on the show to taste test my cupcakes.  It was great for my nerves to have a friend along.  As for the person in the middle holding the plate of cupcakes, that's me!  I thought that I'd shown enough pictures of me on the blog that my readers would have some idea of what I looked like, but judging from Theresa's tweet after the episode aired, I guess not:

To show you even more of what a real person I am, I will point out that my biggest dilemma about being on TV was what the heck to do with my hair.  I've been into braids recently...

...but I thought maybe that would be too cutesy.  I took a poll in my hula hoop class (clearly they are all fashion experts) and it was a unanimous vote for hair down - so that's what I did. (Yes, I wrote this whole section just for an excuse to throw in another picture of Myles.  Next time, maybe he'll get to come on the news with me.)

My biggest fear about being on the show was having to scoop ice cream on air. Would the ice cream be too hard?  Would I grunt?  When you watch the clip, you'll see that I had the opposite problem; it was too soft and stuck to the scoop - oh, well!

The folks at FOX 2 were super nice and I look forward to the opportunity to feed them cupcakes again some time in the future!

Here's the clip:

What do Jim Carrey, Jenny McCarthy, Dixie Carter, and I Have in Common?

What do Jim Carrey, Jenny McCarthy, Dixie Carter, and I Have in Common?

We are all in the April 26th issue of People Magazine!!  

People contacted me last week to see if they could use a photo of my pickle and ice cream cupcakes (umm... YES!);  lots of jumping up and down and calling everyone I knew ensued.  I wanted to post here immediately, but I figured that I should wait until the issue actually hit newsstands (just to make sure that I wasn't dreaming).

I took about ten trips to our local grocery store, Schnucks (yeah, I know, it's a funny name), looking for the issue.  Finally, I went to customer service and asked when the new issue would arrive.  I told them I was in it and the General Manager promised to call my cellphone when the new magazines were delivered.  Hours later, I got the call, rushed to the store, bought two copies (I may buy another copy every time I go to the store this week), turned to page 106, and there it was:

YAY! Thanks to all of my readers for getting me to the point where People would notice me, and thanks to any new readers coming over from People. People fans: I hope you take a minute to check out the blog and let me know if I can help answer any of your cupcake questions.

Cupcake Project Gets a New Grade

Blogging is about words. However, numbers definitely do come into play:

• Number of hits
• Number of page visits
• Google PageRank
• Technorati authority
• Number of comments on a post

I just received an email from Blogged.com about a new number. Cupcake Project has been rated a 9.0 out of 10 on blogged.com. Their score is based on an editorial review of frequency of updates, relevance of content, site design, and writing style.

9.0 sure sounded like a good number, but it didn't mean much to me until I actually looked at the site. At this time:

• Cupcake Project is rated 15th out of over 700 rated cooking blogs!
• Cupcake Project is rated 2nd out of 70 baking and dessert blogs!

To say I was honored would be a huge understatement. There are so many amazing bloggers out there for whom I have huge respect. To even to be on the list with them is an honor - to be towards the top of the list blows me away.

The number is now based solely on the editorial review, but apparently over time they are going to be incorporating user reviews as well and they will definitely be reviewing more blogs. If you are looking for some other blogs to read, check out blogged.com. It's a great resource!

On my end, I will try to live up to my 9.0 - even shoot for higher (everyone's got to have goals). More cupcakes will be coming your way soon!

Every New Reader Is Exciting, But...

It brings me great joy that all of you read and enjoy my blog. I get particularly excited when you come out of the closet and say hi in the comments. Each new reader is equally important to me. It's true. However, I must admit that I was a bit more excited than normal (OK, a heck of a lot more excited than normal) when I discovered that Kate Heddings, Senior Food Editor at Food and Wine Magazine, reads my blog.

Check out the F&W blog, Mouthing Off, at foodandwine.com to
a) see what Kate has to say about cupcakes, and
b) try to imagine how happy I was when I first saw that she mentioned Cupcake Project.

You should now have a big smile on your face. If you don't, you must work on your imagining skills.