The One With The Failure

So I decided to try to be the best roommate ever and make some super cute "I'm turning 30, but everything will be fine" cupcakes. I gathered all of my supplies and snuck off to my mom's house to make them in secret. The big day was Friday and Open House at school was Thursday, so I had to make them Wednesday night. I was feeling a little stressed out with my busy week anyway, and then this happened...

First, I found the cutest cupcake papers at Michael's. I spent about 20 minutes deciding which papers to buy and finally decided on these...

Adorable, right?

I decided to be creative and try my own recipe - white chocolate macadamia nut cupcakes. I used my trusty Magnolia Bakery recipe to start, then added melted white chocolate and chopped macadamia nuts...

Everything is working out so far...

                      
The first sign of trouble occurred when I added the vanilla extract to the melted white chocolate and it got super hard and chunky. I decided to just go with it and added it to the batter. I filled up my cutest cupcake papers ever and made my frosting while I waited for them to bake. Last time, my frosting was a little too sweet, so I wanted to try something new. I found this recipe for white chocolate frosting and decided to try it. (Also, this is where I got the (not so great) idea for adding the white chocolate to the cupcakes.)

When the timer went off, I was so excited to see my beautiful cupakes! What I saw instead was this...

Ahh!! The cake is all pulled away from the papers, and the bottom half of the cake is cooked, but the top half is raw. Absolutely Ridiculous! Even worse when you see it close up, and think about how adorable the papers are...

I'm starting to feel more stressed and a lot depressed as I...

So by this time, it's about 8:00 and after I moaned a lot about how I just wanted them to be cute and fun and special, I realize that it's not going to happen with these ones, and I just need to start over. This time, I decide to leave out the white chocolate and nuts and just go with the original recipe. I also used plain papers instead of the fancy ones (sad).

But as I'm making the batter, I discover there is no more sugar in the house. Again, I moan about how they are supposed to be cute and special and it will never work without the right amount of sugar. Luckily, my mom's friend was there to save the day and reminded us of the sugar in the sugar bowl used for coffee...Hooray, you might think, complete disaster averted! NO, still not enough. Last resort...

Yes, those are Dunkin Donuts sugar packets!

Finally the cupcakes are done. Note the difference...

   In the end, despite all the stress and failures, I think they turned out beautifully (I think that's mostly due to the pink sparkle sugar on top). What do you think?

Happy Birthday, Shelley!!