Cupcake Monday - Raspberry White Chocolate

Happy Monday!

Raspberry White Chocolate Cupcakes

Vanilla Cake:


Sift together and set aside:

1 & 1/2 cups cake and pastry flour
1 & 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Cream together until fluffy:

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar

Add, one at a time, beating well after every additioon;

4 eggs at room temperature

Beat in 4 teaspoons vanilla extract

Gently fold in the dry ingredients in three equal portions, alternately with

1 cup undiluted evaporated milk

When adding dry and wet ingredients alternately in any baking recipe, always begin and end with the dry ingredients.

Pour batter evenly into paper lined muffin pans. Bake in a 325 degree F oven for about 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Watch them carefully, you will not want to over bake these cupcakes, as soon as the toothpick comes out clean, remove the cupcakes from the oven and let them cool completely on a wire rack once you have removed them from the pan.

Raspberry Compote:

2 cups fresh or frozen raspberries
1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp corn starch
1 ounce water

Slowly simmer the berries and sugar over low heat for about 10 minutes. Dissolve the corn starch in the water and slowly pour into the boiling berries stirring constantly until thickened.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup cream cheese
3 1/2 cups icing sugar (powdered sugar)
1 tsp vanilla extract
a little milk

Blend together the cream cheese, vanilla extract and butter, then slowly add the icing sugar adding a little milk (a tablespoon or two) with it until all the icing sugar is used and the icing is a smooth, creamy, spreadable consistency. Use only enough milk to get it to this point.

When the cupcakes are completely cool fill them with Raspberry Compote. Using a piping bag with a large star or a large round piping tip, fill the center of the cupcakes from the top pushing the tip to the middle of the cupcake and squeezing as you retract the tip. Do not overfill.
Pipe or spread the cream cheese frosting over the top of the cupcakes after they are filled.

Grrr... Love Triangle...

Okay, here is my problem with love triangles.

... you know, since you asked...  :)

When you love two people, you don't love either of them enough. Love triangles run rampant in the YA market, but lately they have squirmed their way into adult romance as well--and my question is why? Why is that so desirable? I guess I can see why having two men fight over you would be hot, and make you feel wanted and all, but to flip-flop and not know who to chose makes no sense to me. If you are seeing guy one, and guy two comes along, there should be no doubt at all that you are taken unless you give guy two that doubt. And if you give him that doubt, then you don't want guy one as much as you may lead us to believe.

In any romance I read--YA or otherwise--I want the two MCs to love each other totally and completely. When you have a triangle, you kill that, because no matter who ends up together, now there will always be doubt--and doubt is not romantic.

Not to mention that this whole idea is a TOTAL double standard. Somehow it's become romantic for a woman to have two guys fawning over her, while she has to "follow her heart", and "make the impossible decision", blah, blah, blah. Yet a guy debating between two women is a dog. Think about it, if you best friend/sister/etc. told you that she was in love with a guy and that he loved her too, but he also loved another girl and he was trying to decide between them, what would you tell her? Would you say, "Oh, well you just keep waiting and I'll have my fingers crossed for you." Hell no. You'd say, "Kick him to the curb, and go find a man who will love you, and only you!"

*Sigh*

Needless to say there will never be a triangle in anything that I will ever write.

You? Am I alone here? I'm thinking I am, but I'd love to hear your two cents.

Bounce and a Meme!

It's Thursday, so time for one blog hoppin'! Feel free to join in the bouncy fun!

As for my post, I was tagged by the lovely Angela to partake in the 11 Questions Meme!


So here it is...


What are you working on right now ?
Decided to start a new project while I wait on edits. It is another YA that I have been thinking about for a long time, and it's historical, of all things. :)


Do your stories tend to be plot driven or character driven?
I have one of each, so for me it depends on the story.

Name the craziest thing that has ever inspired you.
A Celtic jewelry website. This one, in fact: http://allcladdagh.com/ That was where my YA series, The Holders, was born.

Do you make up character names, or use the names of people you know?
Both, but even when I make up a name, it is usually a name I have heard before somewhere. I'm not sure why, but when I make up a name totally on my own, for some reason it sounds 'fake' to me. Like, "yeah right, no one would ever be named that". 

Do your main characters always have the same hair color as you (thanks Marian!)?
Haha! Why, yes. Yes, they do. ;)

Name a television show you watch that you consider a guilty pleasure.
The Vampire Diaries! Which is on tonight, yay!

What's the first name of your first crush?
Dann Lanse. He was a foreign transfer student from Holland in my fourth grade class.

What's the first concert you ever attended?
As a girl who has only been to four concerts total in her life I have a pretty impressive record (if I do say so my self), starting with my first ever which was Aerosmith, the The B 52's, then Reba, and last but not least, Poison. 

Which would rather eat, pie or cake?
Brownies.

When you were a kid, what did you always want to be when you grew up?
Music teacher.

What was the happiest day of your life (other than getting married/the birth of your children)?
The day in college when I not only got to conduct the choral and wind symphonies, but conduct a piece I had composed myself.


Though I am pretty sure that will change the days my books come out! :)


I am supposed to tag 11 people, but I'm not sure I know that many who haven't already been tagged, so how about this: if you haven't been tagged on this one, then your it! :)

That's me conducting. This was actually only the dress rehearsal, and you'll have to forgive the
flash mark--I had to scan it with my phone. :)

Author Author Blog Bounce!

RIP Partial Requests

Are partial requests a thing of the past?

I read several articles over the past few days that say yes. More and more agents are skipping over the partial request and going directly from query to full request when considering a manuscript for representation. The reason that the articles caught my eye in the first place was that I'd started to notice that very thing myself, and was wondering if it was simply a fluke or a real trend. I still spend a lot of time on QueryTracker.net reading comments, and more and more writers are reporting getting full requests from queries--which used to be practically unheard of. The initial reaction is, "Wow, they must have really loved my query!", but the truth may be simply that there is a new protocol emerging.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Back in the day, when we had to print and mail out all of our submissions through the post, of course we wouldn't want to pay to print and send an entire manuscript, only to have it rejected before the reader got past the first chapter. But now in the digital age, there is no difference between emailing a partial and a full.

It really could be a time saver for both the agent and the writer. If an agent likes a query, why not ask for the entire manuscript in advance? They will still start reading with the first three or so chapters(the partial), and if they don't like those, then  they can stop reading and send a rejection. However, if they do like it and want to see more, they no longer need to ask the writer and then wait for it to arrive, possibly finding tons of other things to do and new projects to work on in the meantime. It really would make the entire process faster.

It will also force writers to be on their game, and weed out those few who think it's okay to query when you haven't finished the book. How many times have you seen a querying writer say, "Agent X loves my partial and requested a full! I'm going to spend the next few weeks cleaning it up so I can send it!" No, folks. It should be clean. It should be spic-and-span and ready to go out before you send your first query. Asking for a full instead of a partial will help the agent separate the men from the boys, so to speak.

The one problem I do see writers having with this, is the fact that there will now be a substantial rise of form rejections on full manuscripts. Usually, a form can be expected on a partial, but for a full, writers expect some sort of critique from the agent. However, this expectation is based on the assumption that the manuscript was read from beginning to end, which now, many more will not be.

Honestly, problems aside, I think this 'query to full' procedure makes a lot of sense.

You? Any thoughts?