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My husband, the ever-healthy tea and water drinker, never complained when I filled up my glass with some fountain diet soda. He never made me feel guilty, and never denounced my drink. I did that on my own. Looking at his ever trim physique as he sipped H2O with a slice of lemon, I vowed not to buy another fridgepak. And so I watched my soda supply dwindle to zero.

Monday we went out to eat. I ordered a Diet Pepsi. I was not planning for it to be my last diet drink, but last exchanges rarely are expected.

Thus begins the seven day story of my attempt to purge soda, caffeine, and other appetite inducing beverages. I will tell days of success, days of headache, days of relapse. Will seven days be enough to get over the caffeine addiction hump?

the beginning – Tuesday

I arrive in my cubical wielding a Propel Zero, sweetened with sucralose. Sucralose, although not aspartame, is still a chemically altered sugar with intensified sweetness and the majority fails to be absorbed by the body. My goal this early in the week is to eliminate aspartame and caffeine, although in the future I will wish all artificial sweeteners to bid adieu.

After the artificially sweetened morning drink, I cleanse my palate at my mid-day meal with refreshing pure unadulterated water. Nature’s cleanser.

I regress in my afternoon. I feature more water but flavored with Crystal Light Pure – sweetened with small amounts of sugar along with Truvia, a branded and altered version of the natural sweetener Stevia.

It is now 2:30 in the afternoon and the headache begins. Oh, the agony. The eye-pain. The neck-pain.

I continue to drink Crystal Light Pure. Two packets later and my stomach is wrenching. Could it be the headache? I don’t know, and I don’t care. I suffer through the rest of my afternoon the best I can, dreading my half-hour commute home.

My neck aches and my vision blurs as I reach out to open the front door. I throw my bags on the ground, narrowly missing my bewildered cats who are questioning why their normally sane mother is ignoring their welcoming cries. I kick off my clogs as I tumble into the bed, holding the pillow over my eyes to satiate the pain of my caffeine withdrawal.

And I sleep. For hours I sleep.

My husband jostles me awake for dinner… Macaroni & Cheese – all I can muster in my still gurgling tum. I down a couple antacids while I’m eating and, following a bit of reading, fall to slumber until the morning.

Wednesday. What perils for me will you bear?

I’m perusing my photo library and finding all sorts of baked goods that I haven’t shared. Back in ’09 I acquired one of those beautiful Wilton giant cupcake pans.

A family friend was having back surgery so I pulled out 2 carrot cake mixes and a couple tubs of cream cheese frosting and gave it a shot.

It’s been a while, but if I recall correctly, I had to bake several minutes beyond the cake mix instructions. I followed the instructions that came with the pan, but kept my eye on the cake toward the end.

The pan hold just slightly over one cake mix, so I made two cake mixes, filled the giant cupcake pan appropriately, and made cupcakes with the rest.

Next time I’ll stop icing a little sooner, way before I reach the “liner”.

Aren’t these rosette tops on the mini (normal sized) cupcakes just the cutest? I love using a 1M tip to make this rosette top. A nice variation to the typical 1M swirl we see.

Have you used the giant cupcake pan? I’d love to see it – link to your creation in the comments!

I’m a huge fan of Flickr user Schmish’s artful works. She runs The Wicked Little Cake Company out of Toronto and by golly, looking at her works I wish she were local to me.

My husband and I are huge sushi fans (raw for him, tempura for me – yes you can mock me later for not being a real sushi eater) so imagine my delight when I opened up my Flickr stream a few weeks back.

I could figure out a few of the ingredients myself: the masago looks like sugar pearls, lustre dust for some of the coloring… but it was just so lifelike I had to ask Jaime for the details. Here’s the word from the source:

Ha, yup, the masago was made of sugar pearls painted with orange food colouring.

The sushi cake is actually pretty darn easy. This was my first (and definitely not last) sushi cake. The “rice” was pretty much just small pieces of cake covered with white vanilla buttercream and rolled in coconut. You can do it out of rice cereal treats as well (ice and roll). I happened to overbake that day and had lots of cake leftover.

The toppings and sashimi were mostly made out of fondant with a bit of tylose mixed in. You could also use a 50/50 gumpaste to fondant ratio, but I was in a rush to go have fun so I didn’t have time to make gumpaste. Tylose stiffens up the fondant and makes it a little easier to work with.

I’m a go with the flow kind of decorator and make do with what I have… the tuna was coloured with red petal dust, the salmon with orange petal dust etc. I think the key is to selectively brush on more of the petal dust after you’ve shaped and marked the fish so that you give it more depth and realism. Same with the shrimp.. shaped it out of the fondant/tylose mixture and dusted it with the orange and red petal dust. I did a couple pieces out of coloured white modeling chocolate as well, but there was no real difference between the modeling chocolate and fondant – just taste.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the rundown, Jaime! Apparently we just missed her on Food Network Challenge’s episode “Best In Show Cakes”. Keep an eye out for the re-run!

Have you ever seen a cake so delectable as both a cake and its decorated doppelganger?

I mentioned a while back that we use Amazon Subscribe & Save to get Earnest Eats bars on the cheap. Breakfast on the run, here we come! My dear husband was asking for some other flavors. He’s not a big chocolate for breakfast fan.

I’m pausing for your gasps of terror. I know. He opts for nuts and berries in the morning. Why have berries when you could have chocolate?

In any regard, Amazon current has a $2 coupon on the Almond Trail Mix and Cran Lemon Zest flavors.

The coupon appears right above the product features. So simple: just click to clip and it automatically applies it when you check out.

The appearance of the coupon on the product page

Love it.