THE GREAT CUPCAKE DISASTER

HOW I RUINED CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES IN 6 EASY STEPS

                      

I’m in baking mode. The holidays are upon us and my urge to create is blossoming. My kiddies requested a Halloween cake for the upcoming holiday. They wanted the outside to be a jack o’ lantern and the inside orange, vanilla and chocolate cake. Okay. Somehow I thought I had 4 cake pans, but I only had 3 of the same size. Since I was coloring one of the vanilla batches orange, that left me with excess chocolate. I decided to make cupcakes with the remaining batter.

Fast forward all the prepping and mixing and I am ready to pour my mix into the cupcake pan. After inserting the cupcake liners, my daughter suggests putting Halloween Oreos in the batter.

I said screw it why not? My daughter started putting cookies in the bottom of the liners. I didn’t think it was a good idea because I figured they would cook incorrectly. I don’t know…somehow it just seemed wrong. I only let her put a few at the bottom; I took the remaining cupcakes and added a layer of batter on the bottom to give the cookies a buffer.

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I put them in the oven at 350 degrees. I set the timer for 15 minutes and started cleaning up the kitchen. I swear after about 5 minutes I smelled cupcakes, but something seemed odd. They smelled like they were done. After about 10 minutes, the almost burning chocolate smell was getting stronger. When the timer went off I quickly took them out of the oven. For the most part they looked good, however I smelled a strong burnt chocolate scent, so I let them cool a few minutes and started checking them.

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I could immediately see some of them had a scorched bottom. I separated those few and started to frost them. I figured if the tops were ok that’s’ all that mattered. I whipped out my piping bag of orange frosting and began to decorate them. I even had the nerve to garnish them with a cookie, like I didn't know in the back of my mind that these were a disaster.

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Of course you know I had to test one. I was curious about the burnt ones so I started there. Yikes! They were horrible! The burnt flavor was throughout the cupcake so you couldn’t just cut the bottom off and enjoy it. The cookies were torched inside the cupcake. 

I hesitantly decided to test one of the ones that weren’t scorched on the bottom. These are the ones where I added batter to the bottom of the cupcake liner. They appeared to be ok. WRONG! They weren’t as bad as the first batch but the cookie still burnt up inside. I have a list of reasons why I think this didn’t work.  Oven temperature, oven too crowded,  batter too thick, I left them in too long, or I just didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Don't get me wrong, I have conquered cupcakes before. As a matter of fact, dozens of times. Something sinister was amidst here. There were 3 cupcakes where the batter was slightly topped off a little more. They were soft and didn’t smell burnt. The Devil's Food trickery.  I didn’t test them. Don’t ask me why. :/

  <----Wrong, I'm sure!

When my daughter woke up and saw 3 leftover cupcakes she was still excited. Of course she asked where the other 9 went. 

  <---See Ya! 

When I gave her the cupcake she bit into it and just made a face.

I knew it. She let the cookie roll out of her mouth into her napkin. She said “Mom, this is gross.” She then asked if I was trying to kill her. She’s 6. That was all.  I was so annoyed that I had to take this baking ass whipping... I was already annoyed because I was having trouble with the jack o' lantern cake. While cutting out the shapes for the face, the black fondant stained my hands so it made my white fondant look dirty. I realize this baking journey is trial and error. More errors than triumphs. However,  I refuse to let anything with the name "Devil's Food" beat me!