Cupcakes = Fail

Not all kitchen experimentations can go 100% smoothly every time. Sometimes you have to fudge up a few things to learn what-not-to-do next time. This was one of those occasions. =P

And this...

...was the culmination of the entire ordeal, a tipped over, half-melted, cherry flavored mess - with sprinkles. It was an all over "cuptastrophe".

Last week I was invited to a girly-girl bday sleepover and pool party for my BFF's 10 year old daughter. We stayed at the Squaw Peak Pointe Hilton in a gorgeous casita and spent most of our time floating down the lazy river soaking up sun - which was all very lovely. I was asked to bring the b-day girl some cupcakes, to which I gladly obliged as I am always looking for an excuse to bake something new.

My recipe plan was for White chocolate vanilla cupcakes with cherry frosting. I bought all my supplies ahead of time, I was so totally prepared.

But then the cuptastrophe started, as a frazzled Hyd rushed home from work an hour behind schedule. I mixed up the cupcake mix, funneled it neatly into the shiny foil liners and was about to toss them in the oven when I realized...OMG I am such an moron!! I forgot to put the white chocolate chips and coloring into the batter!

I first thought about tossing the chips in on top and stirring them in and just forgetting the color all together but I had filled the liners so full there wasn't much room for the chips. So I carefully poured all of the batter back into my mixing bowl, added the chips and coloring and re-poured it back into the liners and into the oven to bake.

But now my batter was settling and those white chocolate chips...they sunk right on through the batter and into a pile at the bottom. So instead of pretty pink cupcakes with white chocolate polka-dots inside, they were hole-filled vanilla cakes with a hard layer of white chocolate plastered on the bottom that you literally had to scrape out of the liner.

It was too late to start over so I globbed cherry frosting into a piping bag and frosting and sprinkled those suckers before running out the door. At least they would be adorable little cakes.

But cuteness too was a fail. While waiting for the girls to arrive at the hotel, my cupcakes slowly melted. No amount of cranked up AC can save a sugary frosted treat from the hot Phoenix sun.

Alas...in the end I suppose it all turned out alright. I did learn some things, and the cupcakes tasted okay even if they had a "surprise at the bottom" as one of the girls exclaimed later that evening. And as another friend so positively put it: "Now you can make cupcakes AGAIN!" ^_~