2014 - Book 7

"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" - Kansas

I think this is the kind of story that you either love it or hate it, and that is probably based on the movie, because I don't know if I've ever met anyone who actually read this book. To be honest, I don't like the movie, but I loved "Wicked" so I was pretty undecided about this book. It was better than I thought it was going to be, but to be honest, it was rather boring. That might be because I knew most of the story already, but it also might be because it's a very young, young adult book. It was in the children's section which confused me at first, but that was definitely correct. It is as G-rated as it gets, and I did appreciate that, but it just seemed like the conflicts got resolved too easily every single time. It would be a great book to read to your younger kids or for an early reader to dive into though. I liked it better than the movie (isn't the book always better than the movie?), but not as much as "Wicked", I might be a bit partial to musicals though ;) It was cool to hear the original story and see how some of the aspects of "Wicked" that I thought were deviations from the movie were actually true to the book. But what does everyone have against the Good Witch of the North? I don't think she was in the movie or "Wicked", I don't think she was even in the most awful recent retelling, "Oz the Great and Powerful". Someone needs to get on writing her story soon :)

For my recipe to share this week, I present these interesting-looking Raspberry Neapolitan Cupcakes.

Vanilla & Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Frosting

The cupcake was good, although I may have overfilled my pans and only got 36 cupcakes instead of the promised 48. Also, the frosting was super runny for me, even after chilling it and adding probably close to 5 and a half cups of powdered sugar. I was going to be late for work if I didn't start frosting though, so I ended up with this interesting starfish shaped frosting job. It actually gave a pretty good amount of frosting per cupcake, in my opinion, and after sitting out for a little bit, got a nice crust on it that was pretty tasty. So, they may not have been the prettiest things in the world, but they tasted pretty good. I probably won't make them again, but it was good to try.

Have a great week :)