Posh Cupcakes
I have a penchant for over-thinking. It’s one of the reasons why I don’t like to experiment. I am so intent on making things perfect the first time, half the day is gone before I make an attempt. If it fails and no one was expecting it anyway, instead of trying again I just say ok, let’s go buy it so I don’t have to deal with it anymore.
Ironically, I am very good at meeting deadlines. Deadlines force me to make sure things get done, and my perfectionism forces me to make sure they get done right. There are no cop outs allowed! Hence we like to get a lot of visitors because it’s the only way we can keep our house clean.
Combine over-thinking with a deadline and you get one really long snow day – such as the one I had a couple weeks ago.
My original vision for these baby shower cupcakes were vanilla cake, filled with pastry cream and topped with stabilize whipped cream. I was then going to pipe little silhouettes of onesies and duckies on top.
10:00 AM
Pastry cream? Check – luscious, creamy, lick the bowl good.
Whipped cream? 1/2 check – needed some extra gelatin to keep it stiff
11:30 AM
Cake? Check – all baked. They smell kind of chemically and are an ugly yellow, but maybe the custard can compensate. I am, after all, very familiar with this doctored cake mix recipe and people always go nuts for it. I’m making great time and getting work done at the same time!
3:00 PM
BIG MISTAKE! I injected all the beautiful custard into those cakes and then decided to try them. Bottom line – never again will I buy Pillsbury brand cake mix.
3:05 PM
PANIC. PANIC. PANIC. What to do now? Teleconference time.
4:00 PM
Have not made any decisions as to what to do.
4:30 PM
Maybe I can go out and buy some.
4:31 PM
Um, maybe I would do that if I wasn’t serving this to the public.
5:00PM
Maybe I’ll just make more custard. Or – we have lemons! I’ll make lemon curd!
5:30 PM
Decide to make scratch cupcakes. Oh, and let’s make time-consuming parchment cups to make it cuter. Have gone through 29 eggs at this point from when I started this morning.
9:00 PM
CRAP curd is too runny to inject into the cakes. What to do what to do. What if I fold some into the whipped cream?
9:05 PM
Yay, it works and tastes INCREDIBLE.
10:30 PM
Construct a guard around every few cupcakes so they won’t splat against each other in transport.
12:00AM
Zzzzzzz.
NEXT DAY
“The guest of honor isn’t coming. The baby’s sick.” D’OH!!
At any rate, we ended up with delicious cupcakes. Vanilla sponge, topped with lemon curd whipped frosting. I thought the presentation was a lot more posh than the original vision.
TIP: The blue stripe is created by painting a line of colored gel down the side of the bag. Pipe through the first couple inches and you should start getting a nice bold color. This should last for about 2.5 dozen cupcakes before you need to use a new bag to maintain that bold color.