Sticky Buns and Cupcakes

I made these Caramel-Sticky buns a few weeks back because we were having a few couples over one Sunday evening. They. Were. Delicious. When I was making the caramel, it looked so good that I tried to taste it while it was cooking, which led to a burn on my tongue for quite a while. So, I wouldn’t recommend doing that, if you try the recipe.

I think I might have already posted about this, but since I have the pictures now, I’m going to recap. One night I got the idea to make homemade cupcakes instead of buying one from the Cocoa Bean. I found two recipes on Martha Stewart’s website and thought I could do both at one time.

The first batch’s recipe was called Hi-Hat Cupcakes. They looked quite adorable but mine did NOT turn out like Martha’s. At all. First of all, we don’t have a mixer. I really really need one considering I bake all the time. But it’s one of those things where we don’t really need it, so it’s hard to justify to buy one. Anyway, the icing required stiff peaks (I practically made marshmallows by hand). You have to mix the dang sugar and egg whites for more than ten minutes over the stovetop. And since we don’t have a mixer, I used a whisk. I gave up around minute 12, and that’s why mine looked like this:

Instead of this:

Yeah, completely different. And the chocolate never hardened either. But they still tasted pretty good.

Next was a Chocolate-filled cupcake. They were okay. Nothing to brag about though.

The moral of the story is that we should leave the cupcake baking to the professionals. If you think you can make cupcakes better than Cocoa Bean, you’re wrong. If you actually try it, you’re wasting your time.