Fail Blog

Yesterday was a little insane. Brad and I had our engagement photo session and I took the entire day off in order to feel less stressed- I could have just left work at lunch and made it to our appointment on time. I'm glad I didn't.
It started the night before, when I forgot I was taking the following day off. I left a conference call with some folks in China to run out of work at 5:30 in order to make our catering tasting by 6. I told my coworker I would follow up on a handful of things the following morning. On my way to the tasting, I realized that was impossible because I wouldn't be at work the following morning! I had tried to make the most of my day off and scheduled Jeepers' vaccinations for 8:30am. So I resolved to come back into work to finish things up after the tasting. I returned to work at 8:30pm and wrapped things up at 10.. was in bed by midnight.. then..
Took Jeepers to the vet at 8:30 (somebody tell me why the vet always takes at least an hour.. with 30 minutes of waiting despite being the first appt of the day??), ran home, got changed, got a manicure at 10, had a makeup trial at 11:00, got my hair blow dried at 12:45, made it home at 1:50 to a barely dressed Brad, and showed up to our photo shoot at 2:06 (6 minutes late!), had a blast pretending to know how to take good pictures, then at 4:30 we visited with Brad's sister who is in town, and then made it home in time to eat a TV dinner, and get started on 24 strawberry cupcakes and a chocolate cake at 7:30pm.
I was so tired I almost just went to bed, and maybe I should have. I offered to make strawberry cupcakes for my dear coworker's birthday and was excited to do it. I tried out a different Martha recipe despite having used another one of her strawberry cupcake recipes with some success, but not any fantastical memories as it was basically a white cake with strawberry chunks baked in. I guess I was hoping to get a really pink moist cake this time around. FAIL. I should have known, because the recipe I got was Martha's version of Sprinkle's strawberry cupcakes. In summary, they came out like dense, flavorless, sickly brown muffins. I attempted to fix this by coring out the cupcakes and filling with a fresh homemade strawberry sauce, and it seemed promising. I planned a vanilla swiss meringue buttercream, but had few eggs, and I wanted to try out using pre-separated egg whites, the kind in a carton. Big mistake. Huge. The egg whites did not fluff up at all, they just turned into a white liquid goo. I had to toss it and go with a basic buttercream, the crunchy kind Edith likes, but with no shortening. The end result was nothing more than a concoction and it made me so sad. I couldn't even decorate them cutely. The goofy decor on top was a sweet gift from Brad, but looks a little odd out of context.. it was part of a whole love and peace hippie motif:

I still had a chocolate cake to make, so I moved on. Brad's sister was coming over the following night to celebrate her birthday with us. Thank god I had boxed- it's what Brad and his dad like, and let's get real, it's good. But it still took time and it meant I wasn't in bed until about midnight again after cleanup, etc. I was beated!
Then, on my way to the car with all the cupcakes this morning, I lost my grip on the pan and the cupcakes went flying down and landed with a crashing boom thunder bang. Brad hollered from the bedroom, telling me how awful whatever just happened sounded. I grumbled at him and surveyed the damage. Fortunately, only a couple flew the coop onto the floor.. unfortunately, several had done a flip and landed sideways or upside down in the pan. I salvaged what I could and decided there's no use crying over spilled cuppies. They had been refridgerated so they didn't lose much frosting and looked decent.
People seemed to like them, but they'll eat anything. I'll never make them again.. and I would recommend you avoid the Martha/Sprinkles strawberry cupcakes recipe. But it was a learning experience and I do have good ideas for future strawberry cupcakes! It's all in the sauce...
Oh, and Denice loved her chocolate cake, which Brad ended up frosting. We only had one can of frosting and he had trouble making it spread over the entire cake.. adorable. We all loved it though! No pictures, but a brief video just for fun: