It's always such a pleasure to show you the end products and share the wonderful recipes I come across as I find new and delicious dishes to share with you. BUT, I don't share the mess!
Mistakes happen. Even spelling one's that should be easy! I mean, how hard is it to spell "birthday?" This carrot cake was for my ex-boss and thankfully one of my colleagues picked it up just in time for me to move some nuts and decorations around and smooth out the icing to fix it.
Baking leads to many flops. Overfilled cupcake trays lead to molten lava pouring out all over the bottom of the oven.
And God knows, everything sticks if you don't use spray and cook/cook and bake. Oil/ butter and even margarine can work in some cases, but it is the ONLY thing that works for my carrot cake, so I just use it for everything and it works every single time, until of course, you run out, like I did this weekend!
Paying attention to the method of baking is also super important. Baking is a special kind of magic, but actually it comes down to physics and chemistry. For instance, my chocolate cake here turned out to be terrible as I didn't cream the eggs, oil, vanilla essence and sugar together 1st!
No matter how well you think you know a recipe, keep a file and refer to it to make sure you are on track. I almost had a total disaster with my cupcakes this weekend that almost had me in tears! Firstly they had overflowed and secondly they'd all stuck to the sides because I was out of cook and bake. I did manage to pull off a miracle though by covering them tactfully with icing! As I have said before, I am baking with one hand behind my back as my big oven is broken and I'm using a "mini-kitchen" which is three plate stove and oven combo, which reminds me of my first flat/ apartment!
This is a blessing though because although I can only bake one tray at a time, I can make adjustments if I see things have gone wrong. So, because of the molten lava story, I spooned out mixture into my heart shaped silicone and oven safe cupcake tray, but it wasn't enough. They should have ideally had double the batter and I totally under baked them because I was exhausted by that point. I really struggled to get them out of the holders, where as with these silicone cupcake holders, you can usually just pop them out. I did try to bake them for an extra 20 minutes in the morning amid the chaos and let them cool, but at the end of the day, it didn't help much.
I ended up trying ever so carefully to pry them from the holders, but they were falling apart. It really also didn't help that I'd dropped chocolate into them, which had sunk to the bottom and was now also molten lava. So, as a save, I managed to flip them over and fix them with cunningly placed icing too!
As for the icing, Here's where I had an absolute disaster. It is still technically summer here and having left the butter overnight, it had become too soft. I also accidentally threw in more than "a dash" of milk so I couldn't get the icing to blend! I ended up sticking it back in the fridge and trying to go have a lie down because I was in pain and ready to strangle any one who came close to me. l also figured that putting it in the fridge for an hour or two would help it solidify a bit more to become the right texture for piping. This did help a bit, but it was @merenLudick 's discovery of an extra 500g of icing sugar that saved the day!
And my goodness, I made a mess. There was purple icing everywhere. While I was adding the fool colouring, I struggled to open the blue so, I used my teeth and accidentally took a gulp of food colouring, making my whole mouth blue, like I'd swallowed a Smurf!
I also realized that the chocolate I used for the surprise chocolate filling, Cadbury's Bornville, was actually far to heavy and actually didn't melt in any of the cupcakes except the hearts. Next time, I will either need to chop it up or go back to using the Cadbury's caramel chocolate like I did in Aime's cupcakes. Aero Bubble chocolate will also definitely work and the peppermint variant could be absolutely delicious in chocolate cupcakes.
The mora of the story is that you shouldn't panic. There's normally an easy fix to each problem and it's also a good idea to keep extra ingredients lying round incase you need to make a whole new batch! Also, ask for as much help as you need! And take naps or drink wine... whatever you need to get you through😜❤️🤦♀️