Twitter and lavender cupcakes

Twitter is an amazing thing.

Delaware has a great social media scene, something I learned soon after I started co-tweeting for @del_editor. Delaware Twitter legend, @LaurieBick, tweeted this and Rhina (my fellow @del_editor tweep) picked up on it:

My favorite cookbook, from the Hummingbird Bakery, has a recipe for lavender cupcakes. Since I'm new at this whole grown-up thing, I had no idea how to obtain fresh lavender, so I pushed aside the idea of someday baking lavender cupcakes.

But alas, Laurie Bick sent out that magical tweet and was kind enough to share her beautiful lavender with us. I jumped at the chance to try the new recipe. I came into work on Tuesday to see this perched by my keyboard (actually, I think I smelled it before I saw it).

Rhina delivered my beautiful bundle of lavender. Made my day.

Tuesday night, I soaked some of the lavender in milk in preparation for the cupcakes. My kitchen smelled amazing at this point.

And last night, I was able to finish the cupcakes.

I've decided I cannot wait to have my own house just so I can grow lavender in my garden.

I found the cookbook and the measuring spoons at Anthropologie.

And here's how they turned out! As always, I was nervous and mentally preparing myself to have a test cupcake for breakfast just to make sure they turned out all right.

I became excited all over again when I realized I treated myself to an icing gun a few weeks ago! Now was the perfect time to break it out. In typical Ashley style, something had to go wrong in my baking adventure. I didn't have any red food coloring left (used it all on the red velvet cupcakes I made a few months ago), so I had nothing to mix with the blue. Le sigh.

Look at that icing job! I was so pleased. (Minus the fact that it wasn't lavender colored, of course)

I decided to top one of them with a sprig of lavender just for kicks.

The cupcakes were brought to work today to be shared with a select audience (the co-workers who would continue to love me despite a potentially poor attempt at baking). Luckily, I had good reviews and no one minded the blue icing, the one fault of the cupcake. Phew. Success. I will be having lavender cupcakes again in my future.

And thank you, Twitter legend Laurie, for making my dream come true.