I think that yesterday I may have eaten the greatest cupcake ever:

This thing is a buttermilk cupcake, with maple frosting, and a chunk of candied bacon to top it all off.

I bought it from The Sweetspot in Whitewater, WI and brought it back to work in a nifty plastic clam-shell cupcake holder thing. Opening it up, my desk instantly smelled like a pancake breakfast. Fortunately, this was one of those rare moments when something smelled awesome and ended up tasting exactly the way it smelled (unlike hazelnut coffee, I don't know why that stuff is so deceiving).

A portable pancake breakfast. YES!

Ok people.. there's a difference here.

When I came in to work today, one of the students told me that she made "muffins" and there should be some left. Imagine my surprise when I went looking for the muffins and found… CUPCAKES!

Here are some easy tips to help you out if you're ever confused whether something is a muffin or a cupcake:

• If it has frosting on it, it's probably a cupcake.
• If a larger version would be called a "cake", then it is a cupcake.
• If a larger version would be called a "bread", then it is a muffin.
• If it would be considered a desert, it's probably a cupcake.
• If you'd eat it with a meal, it's probably a muffin.
  (But don't get confused here! If it's not in a cupcake/muffin shape, you may be eating a "slice of bread" or a "roll")

You know what I never see? Vending machines full of ice cream.

I think making ice cream vending machines more prominent and more widely available would make the world a much better place to live. Why fight or be unhappy when you can just go and get an ice cream?!

I'd be happy with either machines that sell prepackaged ice cream treats like you'd get from an ice cream man driving around in one of those ice cream trucks that plays the same song ooooover and oooooover, or a soft-serve dispensing machine similar to a coffee vending machine.

How many times have you wandered repeatedly from the cupboard to the refrigerator trying to figure out what you could possibly make that at least resembled food? How many times have you gotten past that, only to realize that you're missing 2 key ingredients for whatever dish it is that you just got your hopes up about?

I just found (what appears to be) a great website – RecipeMatcher.com.

It's simple, just enter in all the miscellaneous food items that you find lying around your kitchen, and Recipe Matcher will return a list of foods that you can make. It even shows a "status bar"-like indicator next to the recipes that shows how many of the ingredients you have – so you don't get all excited only to find that you're missing half of the things the recipe calls for.

If you're drawing a blank and need some meal ideas, Recipe Matcher is definitely a useful website.

Someone just needs to remake this thing and include nutritional information, and approximate cost per serving. I would love to be able to sort by both of those and come up with a list of the cheapest and healthiest meals that I could make. Or.. maybe I should just make that. 😉 It also wouldn't hurt to list the time it takes to make a recipe. Combine all those and I think I've just described a killer web-app.

I'm a huge fan of ranch dressing. It's good on all kinds of things – vegetables, fried cheese curds, breadsticks, french fries.. and burgers.

There are currently only 2 ways I know of for getting ranch on a burger. The first is just that, putting ranch dressing on a burger – but you never really get enough with each bite. The second is dipping the burger in the ranch – but that can get messy depending on the burger and the container the ranch is in.

I propose a third method: putting the ranch IN the burger before cooking the meat. Instead of using actual ranch dressing I like the idea of using those packets of ranch dressing seasoning, or ranch dip seasoning. In a powdered form it would be much easier to mix in.

I'm not sure what the ideal ratio of seasoning to meat would be, so that'll come down to trial and error. But I think I'm going to have to test this one out soon… it just tastes way too good in my head.

And once it's perfected, it's only logical to crumble up cooked bacon and add that into the burger too.

After perfecting my turkey sandwich croissant pocket thing last week, I got to thinking – what else could I wrap with this delicious Pilsbury croissant dough? Some ideas:

• Pie filling – the stuff they sell in cans. Just slop some on the dough, seal it up, and bake. mmmm canned cherry pie filling
• Thinly sliced apples, butter, sugar and cinnamon – a small apple pie.
• Apple slices and a Snickers bar – it's like a caramel apple pie but better!
• Peanut butter and chocolate – a peanut butter cup with a delicious shell

I find it much easier to come up with ideas that are very dessertish, which I'm more than fine with.

Anyone else have any ideas?

Last night I decided that I was going to wrap my turkey sandwich in croissant dough and cook it, instead of using plain old boring bread. Bread sandwiches are SOOO 10 years ago.

As you can probably imagine, a soft, flaky, buttery outer shell is much more tasty and exciting than.. bread. And oh so tasty!