Stale Bread, Cupcakes, and an Explained Absence

To the few who may actually follow my little blog, you may have noticed that I've been absent for a while. Like, a month (unless that's just my imagination). A week of that absence was spent in utter tummy rebellion, resulting in my fourth stomach flu of the year thus far. Icky icky. This one takes the cake, however, for landing me in the hospital with cramps so bad that I thought my appendix burst.
Anyway, that's all you get for an explanation. I'm back now. Not dead yet.
On to fun stuff... This past weekend I played caterer for my niece's birthday party. By caterer, I mean maker of all things, decorator of cupcakes, and creative director. In other words, mom wants fancy lettering on the cupcakes, I have the right to say no. Yay me! Yay power! So, nothing terribly abnormal was served up (Alas, no experiments were done my family), but I wanted to share the cupcakes.They are, in no way remarkable or special. In fact, they're the scary Betty Crocker boxed stuff. However, I just wished to demonstrate the fact that they're PRETTY. This is not how cupcakes looked when I was given them in school and on my birthday. Parents liked to smear the frosting around to HIDE the cake. I, however, have discovered the great art of improvised piping bags (i.e. a Ziploc bag filled with frosting with one corner snipped off), and decided I wanted to make nice, neat little piles of frosting. It's prettier. It's also heavy enough that a layer of saran wrap won't pull off all the frosting. So, yay physics.
Now, with all the stressful party stuff behind me, and no real food left over (things disappeared more quickly than I thought they would), I'm back to making my own. What was left over, among various snack foods (like a bag and a half of potato chips [we had FOUR]), was about one third a loaf of French bread. Getting home this afternoon, I was STARVED. I craved that thing that I always crave. Pizza.
So, as the house is utterly devoid of other human beings, I decided to make myself a French bread pizza. Mmm. I've seen recipes for this online, and I wasn't sure that it would work with bread that had been sitting since Friday evening and was undoubtedly stale. In all honesty, the cuts in my mouth say that I should probably use fresher bread next time. I enjoyed how this tasted, despite not containing all the optimal ingredients (we're out of garlic!), and there will DEFINITELY be a next time.

French Bread Pizza Made From Leftovers
Serves 2-4.

1/3 loaf French bread, slightly stale
1 small can tomato paste
~1 cup tomato juice (yes, we have that now)
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp garlic (I was forced to use jarred, icky), diced
1/2 small yellow onion (or other onion. This could be really good with scallions...)
basil
2 cups mozzarella, grated
1/4 cup parmesan, grated

Directions:
1. Slice French bread in half and arrange on a cookie sheet.
2. Empty tomato paste into a small saucepan with tomato juice, garlic and olive oil. Stir together to thin out the tomato paste. I aimed for a thick sauce, but if you want it thinner you can add more tomato juice. DO NOT USE V8 FOR THIS. If you do, I will hunt you down and stab you with a can opener.
3. Heat tomato mixture over a low flame, adding as much basil as you like.
4. Dice the half onion, and stir into sauce, cooking for another two or three minutes.
5. Cut 1 tbsp butter into six relatively even pieces, arranging three on each half of the bread. Place in an oven heated at 400°F until butter is soft, then spread.
6. Remove tomato sauce from heat, spreading sauce over buttered bread.
7. Top liberally with mozzarella, and sprinkle with parmesan. Top with more basil.
8. Place prepared bread back in the oven (still at 400°F) for 10 to 15 minutes, or until cheese is melted and slightly bubbly.

Eating this with a fork and a knife is recommended until it cools slightly, in which case it's stable enough to pick up and eat like a very sturdy open-faced sandwich.
This recipe makes a very sweet tomato sauce, but it has great flavor and the thickness was entirely agreeable. The only downside to this was that the stale bread was not softened at all by the butter (which I had planned on) or the sauce, and left me with little cuts all inside my mouth. Furthermore, as I was hungry, I didn't really leave any for anyone else.