Bad Velvet Cupcakes

Not everything rosy turns out, well, rosy. Take these red velvet cupcakes, for instance. I was trying a new boxed mix - one that doesn't use artificial dye - and I was so excited to bake and bite. NOM. Look at what a rich red they are before they were baked. Aren't they pretty?

Once they were done baking, I decided to top them off by practicing some of my icing skills and making flowers. My skills sadly did not match my effort, but I was making them for family and knew they wouldn't mind. As far as they were concerned, it was free cupcakes for everyone!

Here's a close-up. While I wasn't going to win any awards, I was still proud of myself for trying. Practice makes you better, right? Now all I had to do was get them from our house to the rest of the family. In Texas. In the middle of the summer. In the trunk. (You can probably guess where this is going.)

And that's where it all WENT WRONG. The heat coming into the car on the hour-long drive melted those cupcakes' icing like buttah. Everything went smooshy sideways and my cute flowers turned into sunny-side-up eggs. Aw, man. :(

Luckily it didn't affect the taste, so we salvaged what we could and threw out the rest. Lesson learned? If you're traveling with frosting in the summer, then you better ice it just in case. Next time those cupcakes are getting freezer packs. And now you know, too. ;)

Cupookies

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!

Pompoms and Bendy Straws

Pompoms... are not as easy to make if you don't watch the entire video. The first one I made was for the Easter Egg Garland, and it was a lopsided mess that fell apart as soon as I picked it up. OY. So, when they tell you to watch the video, don't get uppity and think you can figure it out by watching it and only paying half the attention. You should probably be humble and watch the video. Brought down by yarn! I learned my lesson.

The second lesson I learned was that bendy straws will, well, bend when they are trying to hold up a heavy yarn pompom. Who would have thought of yarn as heavy, right? Well, it is for bendy straws. You can see the picture of that here. This one didn't make me curse; it just made me laugh because it drooped so funnily. I wish I could have come up with a reason to need pompoms on a straw at an angle. I replaced the bendy straws with paper straws and problem SOLVED.

Two lessons to put me in my crafter's place, brought on by yarn and bendy straws. 

Bento, Please

You have probably heard of the latest craze: bento boxes! It gives parents a way to entice their kids to eat healthier foods by cutting them into fun shapes and arranging them into pictures. Some of them are so elaborate, they truly are works of art.

A popular way to get those fun shapes is to use cookie cutters, especially metal ones that are strong enough to cut through soft sandwiches, fruit pieces, etc. It takes more work to do the cutting, of course, but it can look really cute. Imagine your food table at your party with heart-shaped PBJs and star-shaped watermelon. Squee!

I have had pretty good luck with the larger cutters that are sandwich-sized, so I thought I would try the smaller mini ones, too. Here are the results:

First I started with two sandwiches, one with mini cutters and the other with a large cutter.

Second I planned my cutting to get the most shapes possible out of that one piece. It's a little like Tetris. Then I pressed down firmly and gave it a little wiggle to loosen the pieces of bread. Last you pull it away (you might have to punch out the interior piece).

And voila! The larger one looked great; they usually do. The little ones were... a bread-y mess. Maybe four were recognizable shapes, but others had rough edges or fell apart with the insides oozing out. It was peanut butter jelly putz. Boo.

You could still say it was a partial success because the large one worked, but the mini ones were a fail. I have used them before on watermelon slices - which hold their shape better than bread - and they were great with that. So large ones work for sandwiches, but the mini ones should be kept with the fruit.

Anyone else have any bento fails that you want to share? I'd love to hear about it!

The Other Side of Event Planning

If you follow event planning resources - the magazines, the books, the sites, the blogs - things always looks so perfect and polished, right? Even the decorations slightly askew look planned. But what about the fails? The flops? The oh-that's-bad-we-can't-show-that?

Yeeeaaahhh... I'm gonna show that. ;)

This blog is where I lay all the bloopers bare. And I fail. A lot. I hope the truth doesn't horrify you.

Enjoy!