Well, I thought the last request for cupcakes on the fly on graduation weekend was rough but I managed to pull off the Olaf Pullaparts pretty well. Yesterday I was asked to put some cupcakes together for David's actual 7th birthday party at the Trampoline place today at noon. I worked on and off all day, was at the doctor with kids, cleaned, did laundry, made dinner and yet figured "sure I could do it" -this wouldn't be too hard if I didn't have to go to the store for ingredients. So Uncle Damon swooped over to the store, got me what I needed, and voila, chocolate chip cupcakes were in the oven late last night.
I wanted to do something quick and easy yet a little not-so-boring, even though I didn't have much time and wondered how I could snazz up plain white cake cupcakes. I thought about putting sprinkles inside, but decided on chocolate chips. However when you put chocolate chips in a cake or muffin mix, unless it's super dense, they will sink to the bottom creating a pretty yucky, hard, yet gooey chocolate crust inside the bottom of your cupcake. So, to reduce the likelihood of sinking, it's best to use mini chips (I didn't have any), crush the chips a little, or coat the regular chips in a light dusting of flour or some cake mix you put aside for this purpose (maybe a Tablespoon.) I have done that several times (and with blueberries in cake too) and it's worked fairly well though sometimes the chips all sink to the exact same level still. So, to ensure a variety of levels of chips, I usually use a few uncoated chips in each cupcake, and a few flour coated ones. I was hoping my strategy worked.
When I went to get them out of the oven, it really didn't work right in the first batch. Both chips, uncoated and coated, pretty much floated on top. They didn't look too bad unfrosted, and they most certainly tasted yummy, but it wasn't what I wanted.
So batch #2 was made and this time I stirred in the chips just like I would for cookies, and using my ice cream scoop, put them in the paper cups and baked. This time they came out just fine, nicely interspersed in each cupcake. Lesson learned? No need to get all fancy with chocolate chips in cupcakes at least--just put the chips in, stir and go.
That however wasn't the only hitch in producing this batch of cupcakes. I am proud enough of the end product, but it really isn't the quality of work I am used to. I knew an "Iron Spiderman" theme would be tough, just because the color theme again was the dreaded red. But alas, THIS time I thought I was better prepared. I had bought some of the "new" (pricey) gel colors at my craft store last week, for whenever I next needed red. Who knew it would be so soon?
At first I was just going to leave my red frosted cupcakes alone. They came out o.k. enough when I used my thick writing tip for cupcakes and swirled the red on top. Footnote: overnight the red color strangely did seem to deepen a little more. They struck the "pink" chord less with me this morning.
But LAST NIGHT I wasn't satisfied with just plain semi-red frosting, so to try to bring out more of the red, I added a bunch of red sparkly sprinkles I had. (I used these on the Graduation Cap hat too--tasted good, but I wasn't that happy with how they came out on that cake either.) I WAS happy about how they looked on these cupcakes, but still wasn't satisfied with the amount of redness or the "too plain" design.
I had an idea! I had a can of the spray food color paint in red, to lightly mist over the finished cupcakes, which I was SURE would bring out the actual redness, and it MIGHT have had it worked. I do hate these mist cans as almost every time one or more colors clogs. No matter how much hot water I put on the actual stem or the cap to "clean" it out, or toothpicks inserted just to make sure there wasn't anything stuck in there, they just still don't spray--this is true even when I have a brand new can. So, alas, back to the drawing board of "what to do to add something to the cupcakes" when the chocolate chips and the attempt at red wasn't quite enough.
So this is where the Iron Spiderman drawing comes in. I figured how hard could it be to duplicate that gold spider on each cupcake. I figured I could tint some frosting gold (how hard could it be to get "gold"?) and using my tiny writing tip, outline a spider and then flood fill it like I do my cookies. Well, let me tell you it wasn't as easy as I envisioned.
Footnote: After rereading the Wilton Color Chart here's what it said: "ANTIQUE GOLD Add just an extremely small touch of Leaf Green to Golden Yellow." Yup.
Yes, I think it did ultimately come together adequately, but if I had to do it again, I would definitely start with a golden yellow, maybe add the teeny touch of green but then another drop of brown. By now, I am out of frosting so we're going with my golden, slightly green bug color---after all, a spider IS a bug isn't it?
Problem number 4 (or is this 5 or 6 by now?). The drawing of the spider just wasn't working. The lines were too jiggly and I couldn't "fill" the outline like a cookie because the icing was just too thick. It wasn't "flowing". So by the time I was done I had what looked like little zig zagged bodies which to me appeared more like a skeleton. Then with the greenish tint and the crazy legs, reminded me of the character "Frogger" in one of the oldest video games ever--where you push the lever and the "froggish" bug thing skips across the river onto rocks or sometimes the back of a swimming wolf or other thing it shouldn't trust, that eventually eats it.
The other drawback of tampering with my previously beautifully frosted the cupcakes (in a way that I originally was going to just use as is), is that each had a nice pointy finish in the center of each cupcake. This actually impeded my ability to create the spider body as the red tip stuck up through the gold part leaving it just a bit messier and more cluttered than I would have liked. As I moved on, I first pushed down the otherwise pretty point with my finger to give me a more flat surface on which to put the "spider" and that seemed to help but it was a little too late on some of the cupcakes.
The finishing touch was whether to add some spider eyes or not. I decided "yes." Eventually most came out o.k., but the first few where I used my gel cookie icing (very shiny and very thin) were a little too large so the eyes blended together as one "bar". If the cupcake wasn't creepy before, it was after the eye bar went on. It isn't the type of icing you can put in the fridge or freezer to harden and remove...it's gel. So, I put those first few "mistakes" aside and got better as I went along using just the ittiest bittiest dink of black, lifting the tip so slowly that the long thread it was leaving, actually fell back into the center of each eye and got through the project.
They all went in my trusty transporter--all 24--and then into the fridge where they will remain until party time. I ended up "spidering out" about 16 of the 24 and leaving the rest just plain. I figured mixing a few of the plain ones in and among the spider ones, might actually make it look a little less crazy and more edible for the little kids who might in fact be very frightened of the ugly bugs that exist on my cupcakes.
I do hope David and his buddies won't stare at these long...will look and go "ewww" and then sing Happy Birthday and take their bites and the cupcakes will be gone and THEY will be happy.
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