Cupcake Trouble

Tomorrow I am hosting a baby shower for a friend at my house. We are decorating with the colors pink and brown so I thought it would be terribly cute to make some chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting.

So tonight, I began the process of preparing them. Since I am using a mix, I assume this will be a fairly quick little project. But this is me we're taking about. In a kitchen. The place where what should be and what is never seem to meet.

I preheat, I gather ingredients, I begin to mix with my sweet red KitchenAid. I add the mix, the butter, the water and the eggs. The batter seems really runny, but it's been a while since I've made a cake, so I just figure this is how it is supposed to be. I pour the batter into the cupcake liners, a little troubled by the lack of viscosity, but I proceed. They baked, but they never really expanded. And they looked really weird. I tasted one after they came out and something was just not right.





In my kitchenly wisdom, I surmise that it must have been the attachment I was using on the mixer. I used the white, paddle-with-holes looking thing and I should have used the whisk looking thing. So I'm on to the second box. Round 2. Ding ding.

I begin mixing the second batch. In goes the mix, eggs, and butter. Yes...this looks better--much thicker! Wait! Too thick. Oops! Forgot the water.

So as I'm filling the measuring cup with water, it hits me. I put in waaaaayyyy more last time. I realize that instead of 3/4 c. I put in 1 3/4 c. It seems these directions accompanied by the "for-morons-who-can't-or-won't-read" pictures just weren't specific enough.




So now I have cake batter that is the consistency of mousse because I've been beating the heck out of it with my wire whisk rotating at the speed of light. But it tasted better. So I fill the liners again, careful not to put in too much.

Do you know what happend to cake mix that has been whisked for 5 minutes on medium speed after it has baked?


This. That's not a cookie sheet, my friend. That's a muffin tin. There is so much air in these things that I can literally hear the bubbles popping. So I try to carefully remove them, hoping against hope that I can salvage a few.


Not so much. So an hour later, this is what I have to show for all of my effort.





So now, I am waiting for my sweet husband to bring me more mix and eggs, because what I lack in skill, I make up for in tenacity. I WILL have pink and brown cupcakes for tomorrow, Lord willing, which He may very well not be judging by what has occurred.

Oh, yeah...and I burnt my finger on the oven on the same hand that I have nearly severed a finger and gashed the knuckle. Guess my hand modeling career is over.


Thankfully, my little sack of sugar loves me anyway.