frances cake, take eight: the bon voyage! edition

this is marcey.



marcey is sassy and fun and sarcastic, all of which are some of my favorite traits in a person. she also wants to be the next martha stewart (sans a criminal record, i am sure), which might be annoying to someone domestically-challenged as i am, but she's not annoying about it, so it's no problem. it also means that she will bring amazing lemon tarts with real whipped cream on their own fancy cake platter to your dessert party. so there's that.

our first cake date was foiled by a dental emergency+wedding invitation emergency and i had been kind of slow about rescheduling, until she texted the other day and said she had accepted a job in seattle! and is moving next week! now it was a frances cake emergency! it was now or never, so we went with now. this was also a particularly significant frances cake outing because it was the first in my new, expansive, easy-to-use, totally-the-bomb kitchen.

marcey found this great recipe for rainbow cupcakes. these kinds of recipes are my favorite, because the finished product makes it look like you did something really hard and technical and creative and amazing, when all you really did was whip up a white cake mix, divide the batter into different bowls and add some food coloring.





my secret is safe with you, right?

though i guess you could say scooping the layers into the cupcake tins, one by one, was sort of difficult.







they baked up beautifully and colorfully,



and in the meantime we talked about lame men who can't commit, tv shows we should be watching (i am still on a quest to become addicted to "gossip girl." anyone with me?), joe biden, marcey's new job and why sometimes being a mormon outside of utah is better. briana also worked hard on her speculum sterilization pouches. (she's a midwife so she's allowed.)



marcey was only sort of terrified when she saw a bunch of speculums out on the ironing board in the dining room. i am no fan of those things, don't get me wrong, but i am used to seeing them around by now.

back to the baking, the final product was both delightful and delicious, outside and in. i ate two. (my secret is safe with you, right?)











and then, marcey was off. not forever, of course, thanks to the magic of blogging and facebook and text messages, but it won't be the same as a face-to-face over cake. good luck, marcey! we'll miss you something awful.