Congratulations, Molly!

Cake success and fail on the same day...

My cousin Molly graduated on Friday from Bishop McDevitt High School and will be attending LaSalle University in the fall...our alma mater!  LaSalle is where Matt and I met twelve years (eeek!) ago, and I think Molly will do great there.  Molly's mom asked me last week at the family reunion to make 2 dozen cupcakes--half Bishop McDevitt themed, the other half LaSalle themed.  I thought, "No problem!"  Little did I know that the baking gods were not working with me this morning.  I baked 2 dozen vanilla cupcakes and while cooling, the cupcakes pulled away from liners.  CAKE FAIL! After a little bit of googling, there are two possibilities as to how this happened.  Either, the cakes weren't fully cooked or the oven is heating evenly.  My guess is that its a combination of both.  I'm always worried about over baking cakes, and our oven has been acting weird lately. 

Needless to say, I had to start over and make another batch.  This time, I made sure to bake them a little longer and rotated the cupcake pans more often.  The results were much better!   I made swiss meringue butter cream icing and tinted half of it yellow for the LaSalle cupcakes.  Have you ever had an idea in your head that you just couldn't make happen in reality?  That's what these cupcakes were like for me.  They turned out cute enough, but just not what I had in mind.  I've seen lots of cupcakes rimmed with sugar, and I thought it would be fun to try.  Somehow, it just didn't turn out the way I wanted them to. 

Sorry the pictures are so dark.  It started to storm like the world was ending right as I was finishing up, and I just could not get the lighting right.  (Not-quite-right seems to be the theme of the day).

The cupcakes, luckily, tasted pretty good.  Molly said they tasted very fresh, which  I always like to hear!  Holly really liked the icing and even conned her Poppy into giving her his icing...Poppy just ate two plain cupcakes!   After devouring the icing, Holly said, "These are good.   Matt made them!"  She proceded to tell everyone that Matt made the cupcakes and kept thanking him!  Needless to say, Matt didn't correct her!

Congratulations, Molly!  You'll have a great time at LaSalle!