The invitations have been sent, the lame bridal shower games have been planned, and the presents have been bought from high-priced retail stores. Yes my sister is getting married!! It's been an extremely hectic and short summer. Boy! Time sure does fly! Anyway, I was asked to bake the delicious desserts that would be featured there. You guessed it, cupcakes.

It seems that we have been slipping into the "Dog Days" of summer as it were. At that means hot, hot and HOT! And of course, when you add a stove, the sun, and the body heat and sweat you are creating because its already hot and your are trying to get two different cupcake batters and frosting's done in a short amount of time it equals nothing other than @&%! (excuse my french). What I will take away from this experience is that 7-minute frosting and heat does not mix. I was rushing with only an hour to get ready for this mystifying experience of nothing other that oohing and ah-ing over a wide array of typical smelling hand soaps that have fru-fru names like; "Apricot Sunshine", "Rainbow Hugging", and "Cat Nip". Wait a minute. Seriously? NO. You do NOT wear Cat Nip on your hands!!!!! No no no! Who was the genius who came up with these horrific names? Even though there was a terrible amount of crap building up, I was the ONLY one who gave a gift that would disappear! Not something that you would pretend to like it then store it away for future re-gifts.


(Somehow this chocolate...

turned into this)

I was making Chocolate White Mountain Cupcakes (again) and Spring Bouquet Cupcakes. And now I know that only a fool like me would bake cupcakes when it was a whopping 98 degrees. Back to 7-minute frosting. You have to move fast. The second the chocolate cupcakes popped out of the oven I would take my koala and Mickey Mouse oven mitts and hold the hot pan in front of the air conditioner for an extremely long amount of time until they were just about warm, then I would plop the frosting on the cupcake and repeat the process again.



But as you can see, the frosting is disappearing? Oh yes. The heat was destroying my masterpiece! Darn sun. But at least my Spring Bouquet are fine...wait. Where are the pictures? I thought I took them...but...maybe...WHERE ARE THEY?! Oops! Unfortunetly you will not be seeing anything Springy or Bouquety that is related to cupcakes. I do not know where the pictures are. All I can tell you is that, I only made 9 instead of 12 because I didn't have enough batter for some reason, and the frosting had a metallic tangy aftertaste. Yuck.

Now fast forward. It was my Best Friend's birthday! And I made Chocolate Mousse Cupcakes. The picture explains it all...


Chocolate Mousse + Chocolate Cupcake =


THISSSS!



Yum yum! Bake on!

Over the river and through the woods to Lake Michigan we go? Part 2

Yes I did make a part 2 of this blog entry only because part 1 was incredibly long. It would take up to much space and you would be bored to death. I don't want anyone to die of boredom ( but that would look funny on a gravestone).

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes. That was the final vote. I was going to make these for some of my neighbors relatives that were stopping by at the cabin, which was an interesting predicament for me. It wasn't meeting relatives and such, oh no. It was the cupcake part.

First of all I was making lemon custard for the first time, and I wanted these to be absolutely perfect, so if I messed up all the parts that make these cupcakes, I would end up in a embarrassed situation. And look like some pre-schooler that made mud pies instead of gourmet cupcakes. Fast forward now at about 6 p.m it was going fine until, I smelled something, 1 out of the 3 things I HATE to smell in the kitchen. Either, spoiled milk, rotten eggs, or smoke. It was definitely the smoke! Yuck! Only a fourth of it was burnt, and I scrubbed my arm off to the lemon crap of the bottom of the pan.

Finally, I got to make the actual cupcake batter. Which I wont go into detail about. Second of all the meringue. Now I know what it was like for people you wanted to make meringue was back the 1500s. And I do NOT want to go down that path again. As you know in the part 1, is that I used a cute, antique electric mixer, well, we couldn't find the second beater, and when we used only one, it made a loud whirring sound and smelled like grease. So I attempted to start whipping the egg whites and cream of tartar. I have never whipped so hard in my baking history. I got it up to the fluffy part, when we found an old a 1950 Kitchen Aid mixer. I have never been so happy to see something covered in black grease before.

Well after a long day here's how they turned out...

Not my best decorating job...for dinner Lasagna, fresh-baked homemade bread, and mixed green salad. And for desert Lemon Meringue Cupcakes. Sticky meringue, tart lemon filling and an unbelievably yummy cupcake batter.