The Red Velvet Disaster of 2011

Remember how I was saying I think 2011 is gonna be bad? Well, it is. It wasn't even here yet when things started to get bad. I know the car needed work and that's fine, I was anticipating that. But last night, Jesse spilled an entire Scentsy pot of wax on the bathroom counter when he went to turn it off. I spent a while cleaning that mess and eventually wrapped it up in 15 minutes or so thanks to the help of my blow dryer, which is also broken now and still works, but only for a matter of time. Last night we didn't go out. We were supposed to stay home and drink champagne and listen to Coast To Coast. Instead, after cleaning and reading for a bit, I found my way to the bedroom and watched Monster Fish and fell asleep. Yep. Pretty amazing night. One of the biggest problems last night, though, was not the fact we weren't doing anything or having to clean the bathroom. No, it was the fact I wanted cupcakes really bad. Particularly red velvet cupcakes. My friend Chrissy makes the best cupcakes ever. I dunno if she puts caffeine or niccotine or crack in them, but you literally can't have just one. I'm not a huge frosting fan so I usually like to eat naked cupcakes, but the rest of my family loves the decorated ones, and really, she does make them look rather pretty. Anyway, I was telling Jesse how I wanted cupcakes and his response, "Call Chrissy, she always has cupcakes." I like the fact that my husband knows my friend simply for her abundance of cupcakes at any given moment because of how often she likes to bake them. This is a good thing too, because she wants to start her own cupcake line and eventually have her own place. Her reputation precedes her. Of course, I haven't got any cupcakes in the past 2 days and I decided I would just make my own red velvet cupcakes.

If you know me, you know that I cannot bake a cake or cupcake to save my life. Part of it may be lack of proper equipment, part may be lack of proper skill, but whatever it is, it adds up to complete failure in the end. I found a recipe online and it looked easy enough. As I started to dye the cocoa powder, I realized I didn't have enough red dye, so I had to substitute with other colors. So I thought I'd add some yellow and make an orange, but there wasn't enough. So I added some blue in hopes of achieving a deep purple. Of course there wasn't enough, so I added green and the end result was a swamp monster green velvet. How I went from red to it's complimentary green, let alone a really horrendous shade of green, is beyond me. All I can say is, typical.

I barely had enough cupcake cups and I don't have anything to house the paper cups in, so my cupcakes always turn out really deformed. Today was no exception to the rule. Long before they even got into the oven, my Swamp Monster Green Velvet cupcakes looked a disaster.

Upon removal from the oven, I gave my deformed green beasts an oven mitt thumbs down. (Which, I must say I love my oven mitts I got for Christmas from my parents this year!)

A closer look at the green trainwreck shows how the batter was so disgusted with itself, even it tried to escape the paper cups, but was stopped by a baked death. What's going on here!?

In the end, I wound up with a plate full of hideous green cupcakes. If the Misfit Toys were real, this is probably what they would have for a Christmas desert or something. Because I'm communist and don't like frosting, I decorated them with a little bit of powdered sugar and some green sugar sprinkles. This just added to their moldy appearance and made them look like the ground when snow starts to melt and you can see the grass below dirty snow. Ugly. However, I must say they taste amazing and I credit the Best Cupcake Recipes blog for the red velvet recipe which I turned into The Red Velvet Disaster of 2011 otherwise known as Swamp Monster Green Velvet Cupcakes.