before getting started

So, Martha, I love you, but why do you have to have so many fancy ingredients in your recipes? I know, I know, it probably makes the cupcakes taste so much better, but do you know how hard it is for some of us to find these ingredients? Or, that when we do find them we have to pay an arm and a leg for them?! Yeah, so the two main ingredients in a lot of the recipes which were hard to find were pastry flour and Dutch cocoa. Just use all purpose flour and regular you cocoa you say? Nope, because most of the recipes ask you to use those in the recipe as well. Plus, my cute chef husband asked his pastry chef about the Dutch cocoa and he said the whole thing about how the flavor would be so much better with that, etc. So, we finally found the ingredients at Byerley's and the Wedge, but of course this little dinky box of Dutch cocoa was 10 bucks and the pastry flour (which can be found in bulk at the Wedge or box at Byerley's is about double the price of regular flour and you don't get nearly as much. Stay tuned, my first set of cupcakes will be made this weekend, just in time to bring in to my school on the first day!