A Failure and A Success

I know I’ve been MIA lately.  The kids, their homework, and extracurricular activities have kept me super busy.  They’ve adjusted well to going back to school but I’m still struggling to balance everything.  (I think it’s been a week since I last baked anything. :(() I’m hoping to get back into the groove of things soon!

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A few months ago I had my first giveaway.  One of the items which I gave away was Martha Stewart’s Cupcake cookbook which I preordered for the winner.   At the same time I preordered the winner’s(Noodlegirl) cookbook I preordered one for myself.  When I received the cookbook I excitedly flipped through looking for a cupcake recipe  to try.  It didn’t take long for me to settle on  the snickerdoodle ones.

  I decided instead of baking up 28 cupcakes I’d bake a two layer six inch square cake (I had also recently bought two Fat Daddio pans) and with the rest of the batter a few cupcakes.   Everything went smoothly.  The cake batter was delish and the yummy cinnamon-y aroma filling my kitchen was driving me crazy! My cake layers which I baked up first looked great and my six cupcakes were the most perfect looking cupcakes to ever come out  of my oven.  To say that I was excited was an understatement! 

As I waited for my layers and cupcakes to cool I got busy making my frosting.  Instead of making Martha’s seven minute frosting I decided to make the cinnamon brown sugar buttercream I had  recently seen on the blog, Lick the Bowl Good.  Monica’s buttercream is the success part of this post.  The buttercream is actually an Italian Meringue and I’m happy to say it came together without a hitch.  It also piped like a dream. 

Now for the failure part.  The snickerdoodle cake and cupcakes that looked so wonderful coming out of the oven?  While cooling they had shrunk in on themselves and when I tried one of the cupcakes it was bone dry!  How can that be?  When I did the toothpick test it came out with a crumb or two stuck to it and that was five minutes prior to when the recipe said they should be done!  Talk about disappointed!    The worse part?  A few days after I tossing (with force) the cake  into the garbage disposal (I should have made cakeballs, duh!  Throw in enough frosting, dip into chocolate, and just about anything will taste good.) I came across several blogs that raved about the cupcake recipe.  (Here’s one of them.) Maybe it was me?  I’d like to give it another try but I’m scared.  So, I think I’ll just stick to this snickerdoodle cake recipe or this snickerdoodle bundt cake one. 

 

I’m sorry that the photos are crappy but once I realized how awful this was I really couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm for the the photos.  The only reason I took any to begin with is that Babygirl frosted and decorated the cake. 

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