Last night I used testing out the vanilla bean buttercream recipe (verdict - yum, and surprisingly white) as an excuse to get to scrape my first vanilla bean and also to make cupcake towers:

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(See a little bit more in my Flickr.)

Very clever - a lockable lid for your pint of ice cream. Must remember this.

Cooking For Engineers has found another great KitchenAid mixer Friday deal on Amazon -- Classic White Mixer for $105 after you apply the $25 rebate (which is shown on that page). There are more deals on the more powerful models as well, take a look at the Cooking For Engineers Deals Blog.

Also on Cooking For Engineers a very helpful guide to microwave safe containers.