Apparently my hardest lessons usually involve paying attention or planning ahead. This lesson was brought to you by the first. OH, and not believing everything you read on the internet. *sigh*
I read about "hamburger" cupcakes on the web and thought they were ADORABLE. Just search for hamburger cupcake and you'll see what I mean. I had been waiting for a chance to make them, and, with a July 4th potluck on the horizon, I had my excuse.
After comparing multiple recipes online, I took tips from the ones I liked the best. It turns out these cupcakes are ridiculously easy because they just involve vanilla cupcakes (box mix), brownies (box mix), and icing (premade). One of the tips was that you make the cupcakes without liners to give them a more realistic color of golden brown. Yeah...
Don't do that.
Not using liners and missing the cook time by a couple of minutes (I was trying to do too many things at one time and consequently was not paying attention) led to tough, overcooked, and really small cupcakes. These were sad affairs. You can see the poor things below.
I didn't want to throw out two dozen baked goods, even if I couldn't use them (see my Facebook for the second batch I made that turned out just fine!). I cut off the worst parts of the cupcakes, which were the sides and the burnt bottoms. This left me with cupcake tops, a little extra firm on the top but still chewy on the inside.
After deciding I could do something with these remnants and my leftover icing, I got to cutting on all twenty-four cupcakes. It was a slow process, as you can imagine. I couldn't do anything with the leftover burnt pieces, and they got thrown away. There are probably some fancy things I could have done to use those burnt ends (maybe bread pudding?), but I did not have the time, energy, or skills to do that.
NOTE: Do not take leftover baked goods to ponds and feed them to birds. Scientists have found that this is really, really bad for them and are asking people to
not do this.
Once I had all the cupcake tops trimmed down, I grabbed my frosting bag and swirled on a little icing on the inside / soft side of one cupcake. This frosting becomes the inside of the cupookie sandwich. Bonus: frosting works like glue and will help hold the two sides together!
I then grabbed another cupcake and put it on top of the iced cupcake. Just a slight smoosh will help them stick together. When you have something that looks like a little whoopie pie, you know you got it.
Since these were a mistake and we weren't ready to eat them just yet, I piled them inside a Tupperware bowl and stuck them in the freezer. I moved them from the freezer to the refrigerator the day before we planned to eat them to help them thaw. This helped them thaw slowly (although my family couldn't wait and had a few frozen and said they were still good) before I set them out on the counter to get to room temperature.
These little baked goodies were delicious! At just one to three bites, they made the perfect snack, especially with a hot cup of coffee. The smaller amount of frosting also meant they weren't sugar overload.
We decided to call these cupookies as cupcakes + cookies. It's a lot easier and cuter to say than cupcake cookies. This mistake turned out pretty well and is one I'll file away for fixing future lacks of judgement / attention. Enjoy!