WEDDING REHEARSAL CUPCAKE EPIC, EPIC, FAIL

The Plan: 65 cupcakes for a wedding rehearsal dinner.
- 25 double chocolate fudge cupcakes filled with dulce de leche topped with Kahlua whipped chocolate ganache frosting
- 20 triple vanilla cupcakes filled with blueberry mousse cream topped with vanilla cream cheese frosting
- 20 triple vanilla cupcakes filled with strawberry mousse cream topped with vanilla cream cheese frosting And each cupcake would be topped with a heart-shaped fondant topper embossed with the bride and groom's first initial's and sprinkled with edible glitter.

Sounds simple, right? In reality, not so much.

On the day of, everything that could have gone wrong, did.

The day started out rather well. I woke up really early, giving myself five hours to complete The Plan and arrive at the rehearsal site by 3:30. Everything was looking good. The fondant hearts were already done and by 10:00 the double chocolate fudge cupcakes had been baked, the fillings had been made and were cooling in the freezer. I was just about to start on the vanilla cupcakes and everything from there on out went straight downhill.

The recipe for the vanilla cupcakes did not yield the 20 that I was expecting. Fail #1. This I knew, was attainable, as I had attained 20 cupcakes at Jessie's house when we first baked the triple vanilla cupcakes. Whatever, moving on. As soon as the first batch were in the oven I began making the second batch. The second batch baked as the first batch were cooling and low and behold, the cupcake liners were slowly but surely peeling away from the cupcakes! Fail #2. These were cupcake liners that I had purchased online in the colours of the bride and groom's wedding because I couldn't find them in-store at Michael's or Walmart or Bulk Barn. I chose the same brand as the black ones that I had purchased for a previous wedding but for some reason, these ones were peeling away! And I knew it couldn't have been the recipe I chose because I had fantastic results with the same recipe with the same liner in a different colour. At this point I was completely freaking out as I couldn't serve cupcakes that had no liner and I only had enough butter for one more batch of cupcakes. So I made the last batch of vanilla cupcakes in regular white cupcake liners and hoped that these liners would be okay. As I was getting the flour and baking powder mixed together I realized I was on the last dregs on my 10kg bag of flour! How could that be? How could I be out of flour? I tried to get out as much flour out of that bag as I could but I still short about half a 1/3 of a cup of flour and subbed it with cake flour. Fail #3. I hoped that the 1/6 of a cup of cake flour out of the entire 2-2/3 cup of AP flour wouldn't make that much of a difference.

At this point I gave myself two options: go to Michael's and purchase ribbon to tie around the bottom of the cupcakes to make up for lack of liner and up the presentation factor OR go out and buy more butter and flour. The latter wasn't really an option since the butter wouldn't have been room temperature anyway. The former it was! I spent 40 minutes round-trip purchasing four different types of purple and yellow ribbon only to have Sean show up and help me tie the ribbon but then realize that I hadn't purchased enough. Clearly, 18m of ribbon is only enough to wrap like...8 cupcakes, not 20! Fail #4! At this point I had no choice but to go with the unlined cupcakes. It was devastating. Being a perfectionist, I cringed at the thought of presenting less than stellar cupcakes but I didn't really have any other option. I was already running incredibly late as I'm the type of person who likes to arrive early at these sorts of things.

Finally, an hour later than intended, Sean and I left for the wedding rehearsal site. When all was said and done, the cupcakes looked amazing even despite the missing liners and I know that they tasted amazing so I'm hoping that the bride and groom are happy with the results. It was all very rush, rush so I set-up as quickly as I could without making it look like a rush job but didn't have a chance to make contact with the bride-to-be.

So after four major failures, it was what I would consider a true cupcake failure but I managed to pull myself together and get the job done. Why life likes to play such cruel jokes on me, I don't know, but the cupcakes still looked good and the double chocolate fudge cupcakes tasted better than ever. My dad even sampled one and complimented me on how "fin" it tasted. That's a winner in my books as my dad's comments usually begin with "next time..."

Here's a little teaser...More photos to come...

TO BE A MASTER BAKER...

You must bake a pie and make French macarons.

Huh? You ask...

Well I have this crazy idea in my head that in order to be a good baker I must learn to master two things: apple pie and macarons. The first seems to be a no-brainer since making a good pie crust seems to be a hard thing to do. The latter is just craziness on my part.

Ah, the French macaron. I had heard about these things for ages but never had the opportunity to eat one until yesterday. There is a little patisserie that opened up on a Queen St. west not too long ago and with two hours to kill, Sean and I decided to venture from Bloor Cinema to Nadege Patisserie. We hopped into a subway and onto a streetcar and not too long after, we were walking into a stark, white pastry shop. It was nothing like how I had imagined. Oh well. Maybe it's the pastries that people come here for.

I kind of expected to see rows upon rows of delicate French macarons but instead was greeting by four rows of macarons in four different flavours: chocolate, cappuccino, chocolate raspberry and poppy. The macarons were $20 for a dozen so I decided to get 3 of each. Even the decor was drab, the packaging was pretty enough--everyone knows I'm a sucker for pretty packaging.

Here's the unveiling: the logo... the box...the inside...the lovelies...Uh, so yeah...there's a few missing. Sean and I had a little nibble while on the streetcar. My favourite was the poppy as was Sean's. The chocolate raspberry (the lilac-coloured one) was also very delicious but extremely sweet and the chocolate filling was quite rich. I haven't tasted the cappuccino one yet. I think the coffee-flavour would counteract the intense sweetness quite nicely. I hope so anyway.

Moving along, here's my first attempt at the French macaron:So yeah, a bit of a failure despite the fact that I tried my best to follow the recipe directions as closely as possible. I had looked up a bunch of different recipes and most of them had the same ingredients. A couple of them called for sifting the ground almonds and powdered sugar while others didn't. I wasn't really sure which one to follow. I then found a recipe and decided not to sift the ground almonds and powdered sugar. I also had run out of pastry bags and ended up piping them through a ziploc bag. Note to self: not a good idea.

I wasn't terribly upset when my first-run macarons didn't turn out as they should have. I had prepared myself for a long battle with the macaron. I was prepared for batches and batches of ground almonds, sugar and egg whites but was a little disappointed that I had not mastered them on the first try. What a feat that would have been!

In the end I called Sean and we decided to give the macarons another shot, but this time at his house. We sifted the ground almonds and powdered sugar separately and then whisked them together and then slowly added them to the soft peaked-egg whites and white sugar. We baked them at 350F for 15 minutes and this was our result:French macarons with vanilla bean filling.

Sean and I completely forgot about the flavouring of the filling and about flavouring the shells with vanilla bean like I had done in the first batch so instead we improved and used the vanilla bean for the filling.

It was good. Ridiculously sweet, but good. I think next time I'd cut down on the amount of sugar or use a bittersweet chocolate ganache to offset the sweetness.

YES! *air punch* French macarons on my second try! (And on Sean's first try!) I guess it really does pay to sift your ingredients.

Oh and just for kicks...