Eating sugar but thinking healthy!

Hello all!  I'm back with a post and more pictures!  FYI, the pics in the last post were my delicious pistachio cupcakes with vanilla frosting and PB&Honey cupcake with honey-roasted cashews - YUM YUM!  The pistachio is definitely going on my final recipe list once I get it a little more cupcakey and a little less muffiny.  So I've been looking at a lot of vegan/low-fat/gluten-free/low-calorie/low-sugar recipes for my bakery, and I found this short preview of a new documentary that is a lot like Supersize Me - but in reverse.  Five people go on a raw-food diet to try and reverse their diabetes - and it works!  Check it out, it's interesting.  

Now, back to the sugar:

Turtle Cupcakes: Take Two!
Aesthetically, these are a lot more appealing than the ones I made previously at the bakery.  This is a devils food cake with a rich cocoa frosting (too rich for me but everyone else liked it) covered in pecans.  There is a pool of caramel in the middle, which was a problem because it was literally
a pool - too liquidy and not caramely enough.  Do you see my dinky chocolate turtle on top?  lol needs work.  Soooo, I'm going to do take 3 soon with THREE different kinds of caramel: dulce de leche, a thick caramel 
sauce and a thick, chewy sauce using milk-maid caramels.  I'll let you know!

I worked on my sugar cookie decorating while watching ANTM (America's Next Top Model) and here is the result - better than before!  I realized that the royal icing is better for piping borders and letters when it sits overnight.  I made a thank you cookie for my french teacher (she wrote me a reccommendation for a study abroad program I'm applying for) and it turned out well!

This week has been super busy because I've been filling in for my boss at Mangiamo...I made 15 loaves of banana bread yesterday!  Five loaves of regular banana bread, five loaves of chocolate chip banana bread and five loaves of banana walnut bread.  It turned out really well because the bananas were really, really brown and on the verge of rotting (gives the bread a deep banana flavor), and I only mixed in the bananas so there was big chunks of banana in the bread!  Here is the recipe if you are interested.  For the chocolate chip version, I folded in 1/2 to 1 cup chocolate chips (depending on preference) after mixing.  For the walnut version, I folded in 1/3 cup crushed walnuts to the batter after mixing.  Enjoy!