Cupcakes...

Okay, am I the only one over the whole cupcake craze? I think I am. And maybe it's because it's the one thing I can not do myself so I'm done with it. Plus, aren't we a little inundated with them at this point? I mean, they're everywhere. I don't think there are as many cake shops or bakeries in DC right now as there are cupcake shops...Don't get me wrong, I like looking at all the fancy cupcakes that people make/decorate and how creative people get with them. My MIL got me a cupcake cookbook for Mother's Day for God's sake (I did not ask for it! It was completely unsolicited). Anyway, you should see some of these things. Sharks and kittens and anything else you can imagine! But really? I'm over it. I'd rather hit my neighborhood bakery any day. Just the thought of looking through the glass cases filled with donuts, napoleons, chocolate eclares, cakes, cookies, breads, danishes...oh you get the picture, makes my mouth water. And the smell makes my heart swell. Nothing like the smell of fresh baked goods.

So, yesterday was Independence Day, and I decided that I'd be clever and bring cupcakes. So, I did my research, I scoured the books and the web to find a cute cupcake to make that would show off my spirit and pride! Well, there are tons of web sites now that are dedicated to cupcakes. This one in particular is so freakin cute and might I add that the author of the site is one talented mama, it's called Cookies and Cups, check it out. You'll be impressed and hungry by the time you're done looking at the site. The one problem that I have is that she makes everything look so easy. You look at the pictures, salivate, then say, Oh yeah! I can do that. Well, guess what? You can't do that. You can try and try and you can't do it. Maybe if you practice on a few hundred dozen cupcakes, but really, no, you can't do it!

Here was my dilemma. So I see these "swirled" cupcakes that she makes.

Easy peasy right? I mean, according to her, you just add two colors to your piping bag and ta da! It just comes right out so nice and even and swirled and you look like a rock star cup cake decorator!

Well, of course. I whipped up some red, white and blue icing. I dumped about half of each color into my piping bag, because really, if you can do two colors, you can of course do three, right? Yeah, remember that time in preschool when they taught us that red and yellow make orange and blue and yellow makes green, and oh yeah, red and blue makes purple? Well, I must have been absent that day. And I also must have been crazy when I thought I could do this piping technique on my cakes. And I probably used the wrong kind of icing, but that's besides the point...



Yeah, I know, once I saw that the colors were coming out mixed as opposed to "swirled" I could have given up, but I couldn't justify wasting all of that icing, especially because most of the people eating these cupcakes would be under the age of seven and really, do they care what they look like? I think I saw 3 kids at the cookout licking the "purple" frosting off and tossing the cake anyway so I guess it was a success.

Once the muddled mess continued to come out of the piping bag I just gave up and started scooping the icing out of the bag and spreading it with a knife.



Thankfully I had a little of each color left to cover the second batch in individual colors. Those looked a ton better and I wanted to kick myself for even trying the fancy one's. Here is the second batch and what I should have done from the get go:



And when I was done with this whole debacle, it was midnight, my feet hurt and I was exhausted. Cursing cupcakes and promising myself I'd never do this again. So thus completes my foray into the world of cupcake decorating. I can assure you that the Cake Boss will not be calling me any time soon and if my child ever asks me for cupcakes for his birthday or a school event he better be happy with blueberry muffins because that's about all he's getting out of me, and they don't have to be iced!!