If you watch the Food Network as much as I do, you know that Cupcake Wars a new show they've been promoting lately. In the promo there is a cupcake explodes, and is really quite cool.
Last weekend there was a cupcake war on Morning Glory. There were almost exploding cupcakes and it wasn't very cool.
The past Saturday, I was one of the hostesses for a wedding shower for a family friend of Jeff's. All of us hostesses got together about a month ago and split up shower responsibilities, and I took on the responsibility of making cupcakes! I made cupcakes for my sister's housewarming party a few months ago and knocked those cherry cupcakes out of the park, so I was feeling pretty confident that I could come up with something equally lovely for the shower.
I found a recipe on a blog for lemon cupcakes with strawberry butter-cream frosting. Sounds good, huh! And look how cute! I wanted that adorable polka dot plate for my cupcakes, too! So, with the shower drawing near, I got busy on my 4 dozen lemon cupcakes, found a lemon recipe and made it even more lemon-y by filling the cupcakes with a lemon filling...they were so good. Saturday morning before the shower, I got up and gave Jeff baby duty so I could get busy on the frosting.
I knew there were potential problems with the frosting recipe. First of all, strawberries juice, and with too much juicing, the balance of the powered sugar and the liquid and I can see it getting messy real quick. I diced up the strawberries and mashed the heck out of the, doing my best to de-juice them before putting them in the frosting. The frosting recipe was a cream cheese butter cream recipe...sounds so good, right?!?!?!? So I'm creaming the butter and cream cheese, add in the powered sugar, add in the strawberries, it tastes SO good. I'm mixing away! I decided it needed a bit more powered sugar, so added that, it was really coming together.
And then it happened. My butter separated. I'd over mixed the frosting, making enough friction to melt the butter just enough to make it separate. And that, my friends, is the death for a frosting. I saw it happen. It had happened once before when I was making peanut butter frosting for a cake for Jeff to take to work. It tasted find, just looked terrible! Ok, looking terrible is ok for a work party...but not a wedding shower! The cake or in this case, cupcakes are like the crowning jewel to any shower display!
Quick! I put it in the fridge, hoping to save it...but knowing it was beyond saving. Even put it in the freezer in a vain attempt to make it work. I'm pretty good at making it work, but this might just put me over the edge. I frost one cupcake, take it to Jeff, he eats it and says it's good...as the frosting runs down his arm. EEK! What to do!! I'm supposed to be at the host's house at 9:30 and it's 8:30 now!
I won't go into the argument that ensued, with Jeff doing his best to convince me that cupcakes with melty frosting didn't matter, to take them anyway, they'd love them. Um. no. Big fat no. There was arguing and doing my best to refrain from pelting him with said cupcakes, and I packed up my bag and did what any self respecting hostess with failed cupcakes would do.....went to Central Market, picked up 6 boxes of chocolate cupcakes and some raspberries to garnish. Those gourmet store bought goodies were what mine should have looked like, so I ploped them down on that tray with finesse.
Cupcake disaster adverted, thanks to the glorious Central Market. I'm willing to be that my cupcakes weren't the only cooking disaster Central Market has saved.
You might ask what happened to the 4 dozen cupcakes that were dis-invited to the shower....well, they were crumbled and put into a lemon trifle for our Bible study dessert last night, and they will make their next and last appearance tonight in mini trifles for a dinner party. See, I'm good at making things work!
1 comments:
I'm sure they tasted great reincarnated as trifles! Lemon and strawberry--nom nom nom. :)
I'm supposed to be making Elmo cupcakes for Werner's bday party tonight, but I'm scared of too much red food coloring, so I'm afraid his cupcakes look very pink. I say better pink than gross tasting. I heard on Food Network that red food coloring was made of bugs. I'm choosing not to think about it.
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