Guest Blogger Sylvia Regalado, an avid baker and student who lives in Fort Lauderdale, FL, shares today's blog about Sweet Pea and Tomato Cupcakes. For more about Sylvia, check out her blog (click here).

Hi. I’m Sylvia. And I like to do weird things with food. I construct faces and landscapes on my plate with leftovers. I’ve painted with coffee and cocoa. I bake brownies with hibiscus tea in them. I put peanut butter on pickles. Black pepper on vanilla ice cream. I once spread hummus and raspberry jam on a slice of bread.

I’ve seen four psychologists and nothing helps. It just gets weirder and weirder. And my boyfriend, Henry, he’s no help at all. In fact, this whole post is his fault.

See, there’s this great food blog called Vanilla Garlic (click here), which, if you haven’t read, you need to. Right after you read this post. And one day, on this blog, I found a recipe (click here). A weird recipe, one which said, “Bake me, Sylvia. Bake me.” Could I? Should I? I tried to resist, but peas in a cupcake? What an oddity! How eccentric and, in a way, alien… The thought of not making the cupcakes made me itch. But what if this was the recipe that would push me off the deep end? What if my friends stopped hanging out with me because my baked goods scared them? I told Henry about this temptation and my concerns, but he’s just an enabler.

He made me bake them.

He made me love them…

Then months later, like a tempting stranger in a dark alley, Henry said to me, “What if we made sweet pea and tomato swirled cupcakes?”

My eyes lit up. I felt the blood rush through my veins. (I also thought, “Why didn’t I think of that?”) The thought of red and green, the legumey sweetness of peas combined with the juicy, savory tomato-- in a cupcake? Oh, dear. I might need rehab after this. Like I said, Henry’s no help at all with my issues.

So I set about adjusting the original recipe. First and foremost, I had to come up with an appropriate tomato cake batter. The original Sweet Pea Cupcake recipe uses pureed peas. My plan was to make the basic batter without peas or tomato, divide it in two, and then create the sweet pea batter and tomato batter.

I knew that for this plan to work, whatever I chose to add tomato flavor needed to imitate the texture and consistency of pureed peas, so that when marbled, the two batters would bake evenly. Right away, tomato paste came to mind. Not only is it similar in consistency, it also would impart the most bold tomato flavor, since it is rather concentrated. (I felt like a diabolical genius that day.) Secondly in my adjustments, I always bake vegan goods, or at least lacto-vegetarian. So I kicked the eggs out and invited some soy yogurt in. And that was that.

Then came the day. The moments mounted as we created the cupcakes. Peas were pureed. Olive oil was poured. Ingredients were whisked. The one beige batter was divided, like mitosis, and became two different batters: one an avocado green, reminiscent of a 1970s American kitchen, the other resembling sweet potato mash. I saw some affection grow between the colors, as they seemed quite complementary (haha, art pun…).

Some cupcakes were just tomato, or just sweet pea, while others were marbled. Because homogeneity is dull. Plus, we wanted to know how a tomato cupcake tastes on its own.

Never had my oven seemed so slow. I saw the ages pass-- the Plague, Shakespeare, the Franco-Prussian War, sliced bread…

Meanwhile, we made two icings: lemon-pepper, and white chocolate-basil. I was particularly excited about the white chocolate and basil.

But you probably just want to know already how the cupcakes taste. Well. The sweet pea cupcake is delicate, malty, soft, thanks to the peas’ natural starches, or so I assume. Very fitting for a little legume. The tomato? Tangy, slightly savory, but in a way that it still calls itself a cupcake.

Henry’s dad said it tastes similar to guava. That’s about right, actually. The lemon-pepper icing best suited the sweet pea, and the white chocolate-basil was best on the tomato. These combinations created contrasts that highlighted the deliciousness of both the icing and the cake. It was harmonious. Birds were singing.

Curious? Tempted?

I pass the spoon to you now, readers. Go crazy with your ingredients. Get addicted to the unfamiliar. Put peanut butter on a vegetable other than celery and make these cupcakes!

Sylvia Regalado of Fort Lauderdale, FL, is an English major at Florida International University and works at Teavana. Besides baking/cooking and writing, Sylvia is a bookworm, has an unhealthy obsession with animals, and dances spontaneously. Click here to check out Sylvia's blog. Her boyfriend, Henry Vandenbosche, took these photos.