cupcakes

I decided to have a little fun with decorating for a good friend's bachelorette party.
Photos by Breezy Torres

For the cupcakes:

Hershey's chocolate cake recipe
I added chocolate chips and coconut to some of the batter for an added surprise.

For the icing:
Wilton's Chocolate Buttercream Icing recipe
However, instead of using milk, I use water, and I substitute the butter for shortening. This way, you don't have to worry about the icing going bad and you don't necessarily have to store it in the fridge. Huzzah!

my first cake

This is my first creation from the cake decorating class I'm taking at Michael's. Next week, we're doing cupcakes!

the mystery of the 99 steps

Nancy also knows French! She travels to Paris with Bess and George in order to help their friend, Mrs. Blair, figure out why she has been having a recurring nightmare since she was three years old. The nightmare includes 99 steps. It is up to Nancy and crew to figure out the significance of the 99 steps.

Overall, this was a pretty involved mystery. I learned a lot about alchemy. And something was brought to my attention about the number 9. It's multiples (up to 90) add up to 9. For instance, 18: 1+8 = 9, 27: 2 + 7 = 9. So, I appreciated this piece of numerology.

Something that still doesn't sit well with me: Nancy freaking got hit by a car! And then, she's like, "oh, I'm okay, let's go to the party so I can investigate." WHAT??!?!! OKAY, sometimes she is a bit too hard-headed. OH, and also, after that, someone messed with her car and made the breaks not work and she almost got in a car wreck. I just, I don't know, that's just so scary. I would not be as eager as Nancy to continue to get to the bottom of the mystery. Nancy puts her life on the line for the people that come to her for help, which I suppose is very admirable. Anyway, the situations she gets into makes me very concerned for her life.

I am taking another 'break' from Nancy. I want to read some other books this summer, so I'm putting her on hold for a bit, I still have 13 more in the series until I am finished.