"Iced Coffee" Cupcakes and portfolio "building"

Tuesday was cupcake day. I had chosen an iced coffee cupcake to go with an ice coffee frappe. It sounds fancy, right? Welp, remember how I said I needed to find the recipe box? Since I didn't have recipe on me, I hadn't gone shopping for the ingredients. So, I had basically nothing to make these fancy sounding little cakes. Sadness ensued.

Luckily, I pulled it together and decided to wing it! I smashed the recipe for the iced coffee cupcakes and Hershey's chocolate cake together. And it worked!!

Here's what I did:

STEP 1- Preheat oven to 350F. Line (about 20) muffin cups.

STEP2- Beat 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup cocoa, 2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt, 3 eggs, 1 (4 ounce) package of instant chocolate pudding and pie filling mix, 1/2 cup vegetable oil and 1 tsp vanilla in a large bowl with an electric mixer for 30 seconds. Make sure it's at low speed so all the flour doesn't create a snow storm in your kitchen!

STEP 3- Speed it up to medium speed for a bit until it's all blended.

STEP 4- Spoon into muffin cups, filling 3/4 full.

STEP 5- Bake 20 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

STEP 6- Place a scoop of coffee flavored ice cream (I didn't have any so, Caramel Turtle Cheesecake it was!) on top while it's still warm. Drizzle on magic shell topping (Again, I didn't have any so I used regular chocolate sauce) and toasted pecans.

STEP 7- Devour the chocolaty goodness.

In other, non-food related, news, I am still currently career-less. I got some advice yesterday from my neighbor about building an online portfolio in order to boost my credibility. Easier said than done! First, I had to find a website. Then, I had to figure out said website. I tend to think of myself as tech-savvy but, Portfoliobox, the site I ended up choosing, just boggled my mind! It literally took my all of yesterday and a bit of today to figure it out. I guess it didn't help that my work wasn't already readily accessible...

After hours of frustration, I am only sort-of proud of the result. It's something and something is better than nothing. But I don't think that the little bit of something that is online right now accurately represents the caliber and type of work that I am capable of doing. I just uploaded everything I had done from school that could be quickly formated as an image file. That leaves it looking a bit empty.

However, it doesn't look really fancy and professional! While I am not confident that my portfolio as it is will make quite the difference in my job search as I would have hoped, I hope it doesn't turn away potential employers. Maybe I'll try to mock up some more random stuff to fill it out more... I'd rather it be published work though...

Here's the link: brianafetrow.portfoliobox.me. Tell me what you think!