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.

The Disappointing Cupcakes

Theresa isn't too fond of cupcakes. Which is unfortunate seeing as there is a cupcake craze going on. But one day we passed by a bake sale on campus and got a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese icing on it. Which she strangely loved. It may have been just due to the cream cheese icing but that's not the point.

There was a type of cupcake she liked, cupcakes are "easy" to bake. I need to learn how to bake this thing. Simple as that.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find Lizzy's red velvet cupcake recipe on her blog. Only a red velvet brownie. And after the results of this particular recipe, I think I'll try the brownie one next time instead.

Pretty much.

Now for those unaware, I'm Canadian and I have a preference for the metric system. So when I saw a recipe that offered ingredient amounts in metric I gladly followed it.

Until I realized most of my tools were in imperial.

So that's the first possible reason why my cupcakes didn't turn out so great. Switching from metric to imperial probably caused some discrepancies. And I was making a half recipe so again, more math. Math is bad. I know I'm Asian and I'm supposed to be good at math, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

I also reduced the recipe down to 12 cupcakes, so if I failed, there would be less failure. So imagine my surprise when I poured the batter and got this:

Something seems wrong here...

In case you can't count, that's enough batter for 9 cupcakes apparently. Not, 12 like I had planned for. So, not only was I unable to do conversions properly, I didn't even make enough batter for the converted recipe.

So I dump the cupcakes into the oven. Think nothing of it. Start working on the cream cheese icing.

And then oven starts smoking.

This is probably bad.

Fortunately, it wasn't my cupcakes that were burning. No, someone else had cooked something in the oven recently and it had got all over the place. Said person also didn't clean the over afterwards so now it was being burnt into the sides and bottom of the oven.

I'm also fairly certain the smoke wasn't doing much for the flavor of my cupcakes.

In the meantime, I continued trying to make the icing. Who remembers my curry brownies should remember the icing I made. Watery, kind of gross looking and not that tasty.

My cream cheese icing was exactly like that EXCEPT replace watery with gritty. I think I'm improving. Well, not to the point of actually using it on my cupcakes. Not that the cupcakes were amazing either.

If you ask me, it looks the same as the first picture.

They didn't taste that great, they weren't that red and the icing was going into the garbage. I later realized that using salted butter for icing is probably not a good idea. And you know what? Maybe it was a good idea that I didn't have enough batter for 12 cupcakes. Considering how good these 9 were.

I'm also going to assume the recipe I used wasn't that great. If anyone can directly link me to a good one, that be great.

Theresa is not going to see these failures in person. Hopefully the next batch turns out better.

BONUS PICTURE: DELICIOUS ICING

The Last Week before Classes

It's hard to believe 4 months of freedom have gone by so quickly. But with just one more week before classes resume I can't say I feel excited.

Theresa already starts on Monday. She has orientation sessions to go to now that she's in Med school. So it's not like I can spend this week with her. It was unfortunate that she spent so much of her summer working but hey, medical school debts aren't going to pay themselves.

Basically.

So I have a week left to myself. And I have a fair idea of what I want to accomplish with the last of my time. I have a project or two I need to finish. Such as the hollow book. Yeah, this one has been on the backburner for a long time. It's almost done but I'm picky and trying to get some of part to look a bit nicer.

There is also a little kit that I got in Hong Kong that I found that I want to get around to doing as well. I'm hoping to get started on it and maybe post my progress on that too. Can't exactly outright say what it is though. It's a little something for Theresa.

What's inside? Only I know!

Speaking of Theresa I wanted to bake her something this week as well. She's fond of red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese. So I'm going to try my hand at those hopefully on Tuesday. Pictures of that potential disaster will be posted.

And I also wanted to take her out for dinner as well. Thing is, I'm not sure whether to take her to a restaurant we've been to before. OR I could risk taking her to some really high-end French restaurant. I never really did do something to congratulate her getting into med school. Though, she kind of dislikes high-end dining because she thinks it's overpriced.

She might kill me but it be worth it.

Lastly, I still have a lot of games to finish. Unfortunately most of them are not going to be beaten in a week. Therefore, a review of Dear Esther, the acclaimed Half Life 2 mod, will be up sometime in the near future.

I've also been reading The Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. They're great books and I'm contemplating giving them a review. However, they're extremely popular and I'm guessing many people have already read and/or watched the series. And I don't generally enjoy talking about things that people already know about, feels kind of redundent.

I am at a part where lots of people are dropping like flies though.

Last thing to note, due to schedule changes I no longer have a 5 day weekend but a 4 day one. It's still pretty good, I can't complain.

Leaves me plenty of time to blog during the term.