cupcakes... AHHH!

Why am I so bad at making cupcakes?!?  I can bake other things... it really doesn't make sense!

I started with a wonderful sounding SCRATCH recipe.  I carefully mixed the fussy batter, following directions exactly as stated, and divided it among the 18 cups.  That resulted in each cup being 3/4 full, rather than 1/2 full, but it said 18 cupcakes.  So the batter flowed over the cupcake papers and all over the top of the muffin tin, making them a mess!  They also over flowed and burned onto the bottom of the oven. I had to chisel each one to remove it, which caused parts of the tops to break off.

Next I started to mix the filling, made with creamy peanut butter, only to find it's almost gone and the extra I have is crunchy.  So I just made it with that.  I wrapped it in some wax paper (no plastic wrap left) and put it in my pastry bag.  As I squeezed the pastry bag the wax paper ripped and I got covered in peanut butter filling.  It turns out the reason I was squeezing so hard was because the crunchy peanut butter had clogged the large pastry bag tip!  Finally I got them filled, but it was not pretty.

Lastly, the chocolate ganache topping...  I cooked it, cooled it, and started dipping the mutilated cupcakes.  As I attempted to take each one out, the tops of the cupcakes began to FALL OFF, either in part of whole!  What a disaster!  Never again.  Next time it's a regular cake.

Needless to say my sunny day mood deteriorated through this process, but a shower to remove the peanut butter helped.  Oh yea, it was 78 degrees in the kitchen while I was doing this because it had been so warm and sunny outside.