Cupcake Fail

I’ve been craving cupcakes for quite awhile. I had a nasty sinus infection, complete with canker sores so bad I could barely eat, for about a week so that staved my cupcake fantasies for the interim. Now that I’m feeling pretty much normal, the craving came back with a vengeance. I needed cupcakes, and I needed good cupcakes. You know, the kind you see Sandra Lee make: big, fluffy, cakey goodness with smooth, spiraled frosting and maybe, just maybe, some spring-like sprinkles.

Yes, definitely there was a need for some spring-like sprinkles.

Going to the pantry, I found that I had a box of basic yellow cake mix, a container of lemon frosting and my customary assortment of sprinkles for any season. I also happen to have some Lemon Extract on hand, so my boxed yellow cake mix shortly became lemon cupcakes with lemon frosting.

Everything was going well; the cupcakes were baked, cooled and the frosting was ready to go. I set up the counter with my cupcakes, frosting, a ziplock baggy and the container of spring-colored little sugar ball thingies nonpareils. Now, I’ve seen this piping technique about a zillion times on the Food Network. You put the frosting in the ziplock baggy, cut the corner to make a tip, and wrap the end of the baggy with the air out. Push the frosting out the corner and voila! Beautiful, smooth frosting caps.

The seam of the bag split immediately, meaning that I suddenly had a cupcake with about six tablespoons of frosting just spooged all over the top. Okay, so I tried again with another bag and the same thing happened. I should also add that I’d been getting frosting pretty much everywhere trying to load the bags to begin with, so this is about the time I swore like a sailor rationally determined this was a lost cause and switched to just using a knife to spread the frosting on.

Next step: sprinkles! I poured a few sprinkles out and drizzled them over the top of a cupcake.

Cue all but four tiny little sugar balls bouncing off the cupcake, across the counter and all over the floor. Matti was quite pleased.

I was using room temperature* frosting, but I guess it starts to get hard quickly on contact with air so I managed to decorate most of the cupcakes with an excessively modest complement of sprinkles and called it Good Enough.

Now comes the important question: since they are lemon cupcakes, they count as a fruit serving, right?

*Room temperature for us being 62 F, as opposed to 68 – 72 F. Come on, it’s not like I keep the heat at 55 F or something!