Electrolux…pass a cupcake for charity!

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, Electrolux has teamed up with one of America’s favorite moms, Kelly Ripa, to spread a little love via a charitable social media campaign. On the Electrolux Web site (electroluxappliances.com), you can create and send a unique virtual cupcake to friends and family during February. For every cupcake sent, Electrolux will donate $1 to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (OCRF) as part of their half million dollar commitment to help support this worthy cause. Which means each virtual cupcake will go a long way.

What’s more, everyone who logs on and sends a cupcake will be entered for a chance to win a new “Red Hot Red” front-load Washer & Dryer (an estimated $3,600 value) from Electrolux, the appliance brand used throughout fine homes in Europe for 80 years.

Kelly Ripa also designed a custom “Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve” T-shirt, the perfect Valentine’s gift for friends and family, with 100% of the proceeds benefiting OCRF (also available on electroluxappliances.com).

Here is the cupcake I designed this morning…which reminds me, I have cake in my fridge. Yum.

Kelly’s cupcake tips

I love the idea of a virtual bake sale to help fight ovarian cancer.
I hope you’ll join me. In the meantime, here are some tips for
turning out perfect cupcakes. As my family and friends know,
I love to bake!

• Do bake cupcakes in pretty paper or foil liners or go green
  and use reusable silicone baking cups.
• Do use an ice cream scoop to get equal amounts of batter
  into the liners before baking.
• Do make an extra batch of cupcakes and freeze them (before you frost them).
• Do get your kids involved. My kids love to frost and decorate their own cupcakes.
• Don’t hesitate to use a cake mix! The best part about making cupcakes (other than eating them) is how easy they are to make.
• Don’t overfill cupcake liners. Fill standard-size cupcake liners 2/3 (1/4 cup batter) to 3/4 (1/3 cup batter) full, depending on recipe instructions.
• Don’t settle for ordinary! Top your cupcakes with sprinkles, mini peanut butter chips, candy- coated chocolates, coconut, chocolate curls, decorating sugar, little candy hearts, or whatever else you dream up!
• Don’t be color shy! Divide a single batch of vanilla butter cream icing into four separate bowls. Use four different food colors to get four different looks.

Ill tell you what, if anyone needs a new washer dryer, its me. Why, you ask? This is one of the first major purchases my husband and I ever bought together……and we still own it. I’m not going to say it hasn’t lasted a long time, it has. Considering how I treat it. Actually, it was the first thing we bought at our new base in Charleston, AFB and its been………8 years? Now they have washer and dryers that walk the clothes into the washing room FOR you. What we need is one I can put a  comforter in. Anytime we need to wash the comforter (oh, and that’s often with 5 cats) you risk the washing machine going off the hinge from trying to fit it in there.

They were going pretty great till our move here and the military movers broke the stinking leg off. I cant find a replacement leg for our dryer, so what do we have holding it up?

That’s right. A phonebook.

Now that isn’t that bad, except this is where the “cat that pees everywhere” in the house chooses to pee. So she basically pees ON this corner, which soaks into the phone book, its about as nasty as it sounds. But without something under it, it cant run at all because it leans all the way forward.

I figured what else is a phone book going to do around here? Actually, is anyone else surprised they PRINT the phone book anymore?

My point is, who wants a cupcake from me?

~Trisha