The Great Cupcake Disaster of 2011

About 3 months ago, my husband bought me a wonderful book called “Hello, Cupcake”.  It is a delightful quasi-cookbook that gives you many creative ideas on decorating cupcakes.  Note, I am not talking about the dreaded cupcake cake – a confection consisting of cupcakes that are made to look like a “cake” by slathering a horrifying amount of frosting on top.  No, this is taking a single cupcake and decorating it as a dog or an elf.  It gives a few recipes to get you started and shows you how to turn candy/frosting/cake into designs worthy of charging people to make.

I’ve read this book over and over and finally decided to try my first design.  It was meant to be a Valentine’s Day design, but life got in the way and I didn’t get around to making it until March.  I selected Box of Chocolates which are mini-cupcakes designed to look like candies.

© Hello, Cupcake

Looks adorable, doesn’t it?  So I bought a ridiculous amount of candy and everything I needed to make the cupcakes, frosting and decorate.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a decent size chocolate box, so I bought a Valentine’s Day decorated see-through box.  I figured it was a win-win.

The whole process will be detailed in a future post – I’m running about a month ahead of what I’m making – but I wanted to share the unfortunate account of what happened this day, March 3, 2011.

The players:

Me – chef/baker un-extraordinaire (see how I did that)

Rampage – my 2 year old pug (who lives up to him name in psychosis and cuteness)

The place:

My kitchen – the scene of such dishes as Butterscotch Bars and Creamy Baked Ziti.

About 2:30 PM I decided to get started.  It took me about an hour and 15 minutes to make the cupcakes (including the ones that weren’t going to be in the decoration.  The frosting was done in about 15 minutes, so tired and a little messy, at about 4PM, it was time to decorate.  With my learning curve and having to change the frosting a little, it took me two-and-a-half hours to create a semi-decent creation that I would be willing to photograph and show.

Yes, I had been working on these cupcakes for FOUR HOURS.  I took a couple pictures, of them before I decided to move them to better light to photograph.  Here’s what they looked like:

© You Want Me to Cook

I picked up the box and began to walk across the kitchen when a certain pug darted in front of my feet.  I stumbled.  The next few seconds are kind of a blur, but it went a little something like this:

Oh no!

Whoa mommy, that was scary.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY!  PLEASE TELL ME THAT DID NOT JUST HAPPEN!

Mommy, why is that vein popping out of your head.

Did I do something wrong?

FOUR HOURS!  FOUR HOURS!

<begin sobbing>

I CAN’T FLURGSAOGOISGOISGOSIN…

<cue drooling>

Mommy?  You don’t look so good.

Aaaaaand, I’m catatonic.

Wanna see what happened?

At first I thought, “okay breathe, Gretchen.  They could have all landed right-side-up.  It’s all going to be okay.  It’s all going to be okay.  No one will ever know they touched the floor.  It will be our secret.”

Oh, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge.

I picked it up right away because 3 dogs + a box full of chocolate cupcakes on the ground = lots of vomit.  Then, I updated my Facebook status with a desperate plea for help to save my sanity.  I sat and cried for a little bit and ended up just staring at the wall for about 30 minutes.

There were several reasons I started this blog:

• Share recipes
• Be funny

But one of the big reasons is my cousin, who is a chef and baker, in Ohio.  He commented on my pictures that I should blog about my experiences with cooking/baking (mostly focusing on my disasters) and show people how to fix and save your dishes when you get into a jam.  Dude, I don’t think there is any fixing this, do you?  I bet you’re getting a good laugh at this, aren’t you?

Let’s just say that I’m going to have to give myself a lot of time to recover before I attempt another go at “fancy cupcakes”.  A LOT of time.