(non) Foodie Friday: Cupcake Calamity

“I’m not a foodie.”

I say this alot, mostly to foodies, because they are always telling me how easy their recipe for truffle souffle with goat cheese and cilantro reduction is.  I don’t think they really understand me when I say I’m. Not. A. Good. Cook/Baker.  I’m the kind of person who does dumb things when she cooks, even though I’m following the rules.  As I did today.

A few days back, I lamented here on this blog that I didn’t have flour in my kitchen, which was preventing me from making cupcakes.  Several kind souls told me to just do it…cupcakes aren’t that hard, you can do it, and other such exhortations.

So today, amid an appropriately domestic gently falling rain, I turned on some tunes and decided to make the cupcakes. I now have flour, and found this yummy recipe for Banana Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting that purported to be easy and only 250 calories per cupcake (important, since I’ve recently started Weight Watchers).  They were described as lightly sweet due to the cinnamon and brown sugar…and bananas….not too sweet because of the high sweetness of the frosting.  Yum, I thought, and got down to it.

I enjoyed myself immensely while measuring and stirring…I even took a little dance break with my dog after putting the cupcakes in the oven and before making the frosting.

After that dance break, I thought about the line about the brown sugar.

Brown sugar.  Was there supposed to be brown sugar?  ‘Cause I sure didn’t put any in.

A quick peek at the recipe confirmed it.  All together now:  GROAN. ***face palm***

You’d think I’d have learned my lesson to pay attention to the recipe, right?  Not so.  While making the frosting, I neglected to whip up the cream cheese BEFORE putting the confectioners sugar in, instead just mixing it all at once.  Seriously, I think there’s something wrong with my normally quite agile brain when it comes to cooking.

Then I’m pretty sure I underbaked them, even though the toothpick came out clean.  Le sigh.

Anyway, I decided to taste test and blatantly violated the recipe when I slapped some frosting on a still warm cupcake and tried to peel it out of it’s wrapper.  That was a giant disaster, as half the cupcake stayed stuck to the paper – see previous statement about underbaking, or maybe it was forgetting the brown sugar, or perhaps just not letting them cool?  Who knows.

The good news about this calamity is that cream cheese frosting, even a screwed up version, is pretty much one of the best things ever, so the whole mess tasted pretty good.

I won’t be sharing these particular gems with anyone, that’s for sure.

Anyway, there you have it.  Evidence that some people are foodies/cookers/bakers, and some are not.  And we should all be ok with that, because cream cheese frosting is yummy no matter who makes it.