Baking: Not for the faint of heart

Because let me tell you, my normal "type A" self just about has a heart attack every time I'm in the middle of a baking project:

(Warning: may cause convulsions in those who like neatness & order in their lives)

Pretty scary, huh? I always feel like if anyone saw my kitchen in the middle of a project, they'd RUN! RUN AWAY AND NEVER LOOK BACK! KEEP THE BAKED GOODS, LADY!!!!! The thing is: I HATE a messy kitchen! And I do actually clean up as I go (I swear!) but for this project, I had 55 cupcakes to bake, fill, frost, and embellish. The request was for any old simple cupcake, but they specifically wanted them to be numbered 1-55, in honor of the birthday girl's 55th birthday.

Of course I couldn't just go the simple route. That would be waaaaay too easy. Nope. I had grand plans for 6-7 different varieties, but ended up with 4:

1) White cupcake with fresh strawberry cream cheese filling & strawberry flavored buttercream
2) White cupcake with mini chocolate chip/cream cheese filling baked in, chocolate buttercream
3) Chocolate cupcake with cream filling a la Hostess style, with regular buttercream
4) Chocolate Frappuccino cupcake with a Frap cream cheese filling & hint of Frap in buttercream

Sooooo, I had like 850 bowls, 10 tons of powdered sugar, both the Kitchenaid stand mixer and hand mixer in use, food processor for the strawberries, and approximately half a million other ingredients littered about the kitchen. It was touch and go for a while there. My heart palpitates a bit just reliving it through the photo.

In the midst of chaos, I did discover a funny thing...but first a quick foreword. I love to bake cakes from scratch, but have found that more often than not, they simply are not as moist as boxed mixes. I've experimented with applesauce, mayonnaise, coconut milk, you name it. If I'm just putzing around making something for the family, I still try homemade recipes, but for actual orders, I'm sticking with the sure thing until I find the magical homemade recipe that lives up to the moistness of mixes. So there. My secret is out. Anywho, I made one batch of dark chocolate as the package instructed, and for the other, I used bottled Starbuck's Frappuccino in lieu of water. It might be hard to tell from the photo, but the ones made with Frappuccino baked up higher, rounder, and moister than the ones using water (Frap version is the one on the right):


Weird, huh? I detected just a hint of the Frap taste, and others might not have even noticed if not informed of the switch, but I'm convinced it made for a better overall cupcake.

On the flip side, I discovered that mixing fruit puree with traditional Wilton buttercream is NOT a good idea! The result was something that tasted fine but resembled congealed strawberry barf. Sooooooo not good!

I used the good old chocolate melting wafers method to form the numbers, and here's the overall result: