Peaches and Pomegranates

Well, it's been another busy week.....


Need I say more?!? My sister and my lil cutest peach of a nephew- Duncan- came to visit me! He's 3 months old this week, and has the best smile ever. He dipped his toes in the ocean for the first time, went to hot springs, laid naked in the California sun (they're from Wisconsin- 7 foot snow drifts right now!), and met so many new people, most importantly his Aunty Mickey!! :D
It was so wonderful spending the week with them, and I sure miss them already, but alas....
the baking must go on! I recently got wind of another baking contest, this time for POM pomegranate juice. The theme was Valentine's Day Cupcakes for American Heart Month, using pomegranate juice in some way. I baked, submitted, and the voting has begun. Voting goes until February 28th and the winner gets $300 and a bunch of POM juices. We shall see....



As I said on my facebook page tonight, I'm not sure if I have a snowballs chance in hell of winning, some peeps have almost 300 votes already and I'm at 45, but it sure was a fun challenge, yet again. I think I'm onto something with this cookbook challenge meets baking contests. They sort of fuel one another! I just found another one tonight (not baking themed though) involving dried cherries or cherry juice from the people at Choose Cherries. I suppose I could make a dessert, but right away I thought of a delightful quinoa salad. Besides, I'm sure they will have a ton of dessert entries. Very fun.....

So for my POM cupcake contest, here's what I produced-




POM Sweet Tarts! A vanilla bean-pomegranate cupcake, with Mocha Frosting and a pomegranate vanilla reduction drizzled on the top. They came out pretty darn tasty. I was a bit thrown off by the color of the cake, as when I made the batter, it was a delightful petal pink- exactly what I was shooting for!


When they were all done baking, they were sort of a muted lavender grey brown color. :(
I was going to redo them entirely, but they had such great zing and flavor from the POM, I kept them anyway. Besides, they were topped with fluffy mocha dreaminess, who cares what color the cake is! To top it off (pun intended) I added pomegranate-vanilla bean reduction and since something Valentines was still lacking, I made some little hearts at the last minute. Which, in my opinion, make the lil numbers complete.



It was hard to decide which one to submit, they were all so cute! (cupcake porn ensuing)




That's all for this week, please vote for me if you're reading this! I'll post results in March, if they're worth posting.... :) Thank you!!