Baking and cooking disasters abound...

So I must have seriously ticked off the kitchen gods. I tried to make black-bottom cupcakes for a party this past Saturday and they were a complete and utter disaster. Gross tasting, dry, ugly, oh ugh...just bad.

So, then I went back to my ol' favorite - Amy Sedaris Vanilla Cupcake recipe. It's easy and delicious. Usually. This time, in my rush, I think I overmixed the batter because the cupcakes were tough and dense.

I figured I would hide this under a layer of Swiss Meringue Buttercream (SMBC) icing. I had seen other bloggers do it, so why couldn't I? Oh, not a good idea at all. After my first batch of egg whites failed to form peaks, I dumped them and started again. They peaked beautifully and I beat in the butter, just like I was told. Suddenly, my beautiful SMBC became a gross, buttery, disgusting mess. There were chunks of butter throughout, making it lumpy SMBC icing. Not attractive at all. I frosted 4 of them for dinner, planning to do the rest later. My IL's kindly nibbled through the cupcakes, but I could tell they didn't like it.

So I decided to frost the remaining cupcakes with Dorie's chocolate ganache. This came together easily, but hardened. I forgot it did that. So, now I had dense, dry cupcakes frosted with hard chocolate ganache. People at the party on Sunday seemed to like them okay, but I was not proud at all.

Oh, and did I mention that our garbage disposal flooded the kitchen? Yeah, it was not a good baking week!