Cupcake Marathon

Just recently I have started to bake more often, I have never been very good at it, rubbish in fact. I have to keep trying though, I'm not the sort of person to turn my hand to something and give up just because I couldn't get it right.

I remember when I was little, maybe five years of age, my father decided it was time I learnt to ride a two wheeler bicycle and removed the stabilisers off my little green bike, much to my horror. I loved my little bike, but try as I might I couldn't get the hang of riding it without the stabilisers, my father refused to put them back on and I refused to keep trying with him shouting at me because I wasn't peddling fast enough or sitting up straight, in the end I opted for riding my tricycle, that is until one early morning, when I got up before anyone else in the street we lived on. I got dressed, went into the garage and got out my little green bike got on it and rode it right off the bat, straight down the street, waking everyone up as I went, it was a little squeaky. This is just one example of my determination, I can't stand to fail.

Baking wasn't going to defeat me either I just needed to be in the right frame of mind to do it. I have been off work, ill for the last eight weeks or so, after a couple of weeks the boredom set in and I started to bake, all kinds of things, biscuits/cookies, brownies of various types, bars and cupcakes and sending my baking goodies with Glen to work.

Last week I sent him in with red velvet cupcakes and one of the guys he works with asked if I could bake 70-80 cupcakes for a christening with a baby blue frosting on top.  I agreed to do it... At the time it seemed like a good idea a proper project to set my mind to but after a few hours of agreeing to do it the panic set in, after all it wasn't just a few cupcakes it was a whole load of cupcakes. I had never really used a piping bag with tips making swirling patterns, sure I stuck frosting in the piping bag and vertically held it over the top of a cupcake and squeezed but that's it, a blob on top of the cakes. Now I was expected to do swirls. I ended up buying four piping kits before I got the right one and spent an evening practicing on baking paper, swirling and swirling then scooping the frosting back into the pot and then into the piping bag again, to start over.

This is my first attempt at trying a buttercream rose (not one I sent off)

Thursday night I made up a big bowl of baby blue frosting - turns out it wasn't big enough and I had to make more. Then on Friday I got up, got myself into the right frame of mind then at 1100 I started to make the cupcakes, 91 in total an extra 10 got added to the list, for someone else. I made classic vanilla, chocolate and red velvet cupcakes, then using my new found skill, frosted them all decorating the tops with edible glitter and little white sugar balls, to be fair although not perfect, for a beginner I didn't do a bad job of them not only that but I really enjoyed making them. So much so that I have bought three cake decorating books, each month I am going to buy a little bit of cake decorating kit and make a proper hobby out of it.