Last week I took a batch of my Carrot-Pineapple-Walnut Sourdough Cupcakes to work. They are a perennial favorite, and I suggest you try them - they're a great way to use up excess starter.

Evidently someone was inspired, and the next day there was a grocery store coffee cake with a "cream cheese icing" on it. It was ghastly. I can not describe the taste of the icing and remain even vaguely polite. Let's just say it tasted like it had been eaten before. And this is SUCH a shame because it is so easy to make great coffee cakes.

You can make them as you]re getting ready to go to work, and they-ll be SO much better than what you could buy at the store. A recurring comment in my baking classes is, "I'm so bad at baking, I can't even bake biscuits!"

A depressing number of my female coworkers can't cook anything unless a microwave is involved. So, I'm wondering - is there is a place for a half day basic home baking class? We'd make a few coffee cakes, some biscuits, maybe some sausage gravy, a quick bread (like a banana bread), maybe a soda bread (self-rising flour and beer can work wonders!)

What do you think? Or are most people who wind up here far enough past that stage that it would be a class that no one ever signed up for? Like on "Family Feud" where someone gives a stupid answer and everyone on their team claps and says, "Good Answer!" as the host blinks like a fish out of water?