Happy Belated Birthday Mom

I'm fairly good for remembering the birthdays of people. So imagine my surprise last week when my Mother says to me "I think this is the first time you've ever forgotten to wish me a happy birthday."

Oops.

And so I feel like a terrible son and I sit there wondering if there was anything I could try and do to make it up to her.

Hmmm...

And thus I decided to try and bake red velvet brownies again. Cupcakes for my Mom is something I've never done before. And this time I had decent recipes courtesy of both Lizzy and Michele, so I had a much better chance of doing these properly.

But immediately when I started, I noticed a problem. We had almost no butter left in the house. I had no choice but to make a third of the recipe and go from there. I also forgot to buy buttermilk and substituted 2% instead but I'm certain that it's still better than using sour cream like the first recipe I used suggested.

Maybe I could have added a bit more dye though...

 

As I'm going along, I begin to notice that it's getting increasingly difficult to mix the batter. I just attributed it to the mixture being more thick with this new recipe and continued on.

Until I realized that the mixer was dying.

Yep, looks like whoever used the electric beater last (probably me) was too inconsiderate to even charge the electric beater after using it (also sounds like me).

So I had to mix the batter by hand near the end. Wasn't that bad. Also learned the hard way why you don't mix liquids and powders together. I hope no one minds getting a chunk of hardened cocoa in their cupcake later on.

Baking goes without incident and in the end I get:

Voila.

It may be hard to tell from this photo but these looked (and tasted) A LOT better than the first batch. I can't tell if it's because I'm improving or if the second recipe is way better.

Unfortunately, I used the last of the butter to make the batter so that meant no icing. And maybe that wasn't such a bad thing, because all the icing I ever make turns out disgusting and weird looking.

Mom said she liked the cupcake. And only ate half of that. My sister, Bree, ate half of that half and then said there were crunchy things inside. My brother and Dad have not touched one and I doubt they will.

It doesn't look that bad does it?

Theresa got one and she said she enjoyed it. But I'm certain that if I burnt a cupcake to a crisp and gave it to her she'd still "like" it. Looks like I need more practice with baking but it's always nice to make progress.