I am still baking and not knitting. Well, not knitting enough and baking too much. I actually forgot, FORGOT, to take waiting room knitting with me on three, THREE separate occasions. Woe is me! I'm at the heel flaps for the plain vanilla socks and at the first round of color B on the shawl. I just printed off a couple of dish cloth patterns. I need a break.
But back to baking: On Memorial Day I created my first disaster. It was to be limoncello cupcakes with limoncello buttercream icing. My 12 cup muffin pan was missing, probably lost in the kitchen redo of a two years ago. However, it was a perfect opportunity to use one of my cupcake cake pans. Instead of the giant cupcake cake pan, I used the one that makes four "mini" cupcakes. (They are really very large, two-part cupcakes.) I used a recipe from a blog I stumbled upon.
At one point when I looked in the oven, the batter in four of the wells had overflowed and risen and four had fallen! A little while later, close to time to take them out, they had all fallen. Disaster!
But back to baking: On Memorial Day I created my first disaster. It was to be limoncello cupcakes with limoncello buttercream icing. My 12 cup muffin pan was missing, probably lost in the kitchen redo of a two years ago. However, it was a perfect opportunity to use one of my cupcake cake pans. Instead of the giant cupcake cake pan, I used the one that makes four "mini" cupcakes. (They are really very large, two-part cupcakes.) I used a recipe from a blog I stumbled upon.
At one point when I looked in the oven, the batter in four of the wells had overflowed and risen and four had fallen! A little while later, close to time to take them out, they had all fallen. Disaster!
They were like cookies, cookie liners for a cupcake pan! And they had the nerve to be tasty! I couldn't get them out without a chisel so I soaked the whole pan in water and threw the sodden mess away. What happened, you wonder? So did I. In printing the recipe from the blog some mysterious symbols appeared in the printout. What did me in was a "1" that showed up in front of the "1/2 cup" of sugar. I used a cup and a half of sugar! No wonder I got cookies instead of cupcakes!!
So, off I went to ACMoore and Michael's with 40% and 50% discount coupons in hand and bought a 12 cupcake pan, some cute cupcake print paper linings and matching boxes that hold four cupcakes each.
Unfortunately, my next disaster was about to occur. I used another blog recipe to make Martha Stewart's Gingerbread Cupcakes. I should have used the recipe straight from Martha's site and I would have known to use "large cupcake papers and two jumbo muffin tins" to bake these cupcakes. Or at least I would have known to bake 18 - 20 standard size ones. Here is what I got:
and these that overflowed because I filled them too high trying to use all the remaining batter:
And then the yummy limoncello cream cheese buttercream icing was a little too loose to get a thick coat on them. Too much limoncello I'm afraid.
Not the prettiest and not for gift giving, but they taste really good. Another lesson learned: I will not use my cute lining papers on dark cupcakes again. You can't even see the design. Light papers need to be used to contain light batter, not gingerbread and certainly not chocolate. Who knew?
All was not lost over the holiday weekend. I can end on a high note. The day before the cupcake fiasco I made a beehive honey cake. It looks good and tastes even better.
Bzzzzzzz.
Bona Fide Knitter
