Day 9: Failure

I made awful cupcakes today.  I was kind of in a bad mood and so I just whipped together some ingredients, based on what I remembered from recipes and what I had on hand.  The cake was made using flour and corn meal, then I added the juice of an orange and a bunch of orange zest.  Orange does not come out as well as lemon.  They almost tasted like fake orange flavoring, which is odd.  I think it was the zest, the flavor was not quite, but definitely on its way to being bitter.  With too much corn meal it ended up being like a cornbread that a cake.

Other mistakes: Too much batter in each cup so it overflowed the cup in baking.  The cake wasn't puffy either.  They weren't nice and round and puffy in the middle, like happy convex little arches.  They caved in to be lower in the center than on the edges.  I'm not sure if it was the recipe or the amount of batter that contributed to the cake 'falling'.  As for frosting, I wanted to make a super fine chocolate chip buttercream.  I ended up grating the chocolate way too finely, so the frosting kind of looks dirty.

Mistakes are as important as successes.  What I learned today is that my pre-cooking research is very important.  If I were to do it again, I think it would be a chocolate orange cake instead with some sort of tangy citrus frosting (lime? It's what comes to mind)

Remember: be creative and learn from your mistakes.  I might have made nasty cupcakes, but I certainly felt better after! ^_^