They Only Look Like the Worst Cupcakes Ever

Note: The title of this post is not about the cupcakes in that photo above.

My friend Jennie (whom I refer to as a sister from another mother and father) was just in town to launch her fantastic new cookbook, Homemade with Love. My 9 year old son, Bird, has been fascinated with her book since I got it. He is also quite fond of Jennie and thinks she really needs her own TV show. We visited Jennie last spring, and let me tell you, the girl sets a delightfully cozy table. When my sons got gum as a treat she served Chiclets to them in tiny ramekins. Ramekins! I know Jennie well enough to give her ample shit for this.

Well, Bird and I had a rare evening together tonight. I didn’t want a hoops rematch because I prefer to rest on my laurels from my win the last time we played was a tish tired. We opted for a game of horseshoes while Lark ran amok. I should invent a fancy dog collar and attach the Charity Miles app to that speed demon who drools gloriously when he runs laps around the garage at full speed. Come to think of it, my sons have been known to do the very same thing. After I lost at horseshoes, Bird wanted to come inside to make cupcakes from Jennie’s book. He grabbed the batch of all purpose baking mix that Jennie so graciously made for me before she left Raleigh. He grabbed the cocoa, canola oil, milk, and egg. He measured and mixed while I putzed. 

Our baking extravaganza turned into a science experiment of sorts. You see, we are in the midst of packing to move. We are about to embark on a massive historic renovation and are moving to temporary quarters during construction. Right now our house is a jumble of boxes labeled in green to indicate moving to the rental house or red to mark what goes to storage. If nothing else, I do love a system. Well, in my eagerness to pack I squirreled away all the kitchen must-haves I figured we’ll need in our six months at a rental house. That means that Bird and I baked cupcakes with no liquid measuring cup, whisk, or wooden spoon. And another detail that almost derailed us is that I also packed the cupcake tins.

This was going to require some creativity.

I pulled out the pizza pan and nestled cupcake liners together in a beehive pattern. I might have been beaming a bit at my own brilliance. I began filling the chocolatey goodness of Jennie’s recipe into the cupcake liners. I spilled a little, and Bird licked it off my finger. He spewed it out, audibly making pthpth sounds. It turns out we forgot the sugar. A comedy of baking errors indeed. We added some sugar, but then the consistency was off. In went some milk. Then some all purpose baking mix. Then some milk. Mix. Mix. Mix. Such is the problem when you don’t have proper measuring tools. Alas, the batter reached the correct consistency, and once again I spooned batter into cupcake liners (sans cupcake pan). Bird was skeptical. If nothing else, we had the batter and spatula to lick.

Here are our Rorschach cupcakes.

Lessons learned:

• You cannot make cupcakes without a cupcake pan.
• Smooshcakes that resemble a hybrid of cookie/brownie/cupcake still taste pretty dang good.
• The leftover chocolate ganache that Jennie made that we found in the fridge rescued us.
• Jennie’s recipes are so no-fail that they work even when you fail.