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Day: June 13, 2013

June 13, 2013
JennyTrout
31 Comments

A bad case of the “I Don’t Wanna!”s and how to make rainbow cupcakes that are amazing.

Posted in Uncategorized

Friends. Friends.

I have a really bad case of the “I Don’t Wanna!”s.

I think this has something to do with the fact that the last week of school for my children was really busy and hectic, and frankly, I’m a lazy person. I’ve been really enjoying sleeping and getting up and not cleaning my kitchen and writing all day long on projects I want to work on. But that means I’ve been loathe to meet my other obligations, as evidenced by the week of no recaps last week. While I realize that most of you are cool with stuff posting just whenever, I feel like I have a responsibility to myself to stay on track with the schedule I’ve set for myself.

OH! That reminds me: for all you Roadhouse watchers, the last episode we filmed? Was amazing. Unfortunately, something went terribly wrong with the video. All we have is the audio. I’m working on a way to make that work. So, right now we’re on a brief hiatus while I figure out a new way to film the show, fix the stuff we filmed, and plan on this NEVER HAPPENING AGAIN. This happened to us before, we filmed the perfect show and the file just VANISHED. We just have to stop filming good shows, I guess.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Schedules and the “I Don’t Wanna!”s. I’ve been writing like it’s a compulsion. All I do, all day long, until my husband begs me to stop, is write. Yes, this is what I’m usually like, but somehow it’s different over this past week. It’s been less, “I am writing because it is my job and I enjoy it,” more, “I am writing because IT CONSUMES ME UNTIL ALL THAT IS LEFT IS BONE AND ASH.” And the weird thing is… I Don’t Wanna. I don’t want to write. I want to do other stuff. In eight days, I’m going on a retreat to an isolated cabin on the Keeweenaw peninsula, for the soul purpose of finishing The Girlfriend- or, at least, getting it very close to being finished- and trying to spot Mishipeshu. I know I’ve got a busy summer ahead of me when I get back, with revisions for Such Sweet Sorrow and proposals for the next two books in that series (Wondrous Strange), publishing the POD and e-book versions of The Boss and The Girlfriend, finishing and shopping out a proposal for another vampire series, and writing Raptors of The Great Plains. Maybe that’s why I’m locked into the “I Don’t Wanna!”s right now, as well as the compulsive writing.

There’s no real point to telling you all of this, I just find it interesting/slightly worrying from a mental health standpoint. I’m going back and forth between wondering if this is a healthy thing going on, or the beginning of some mania.

But now, let me teach you how to make some amazing cupcakes.

I’ve written on this blog about making rainbow cupcakes and tie-dye cake before. But I’m not sure I told you how to make them extra-awesome with Air Heads, so here. This is how you make them.

You’re going to need some stuff:

You’re going to need boxed cake mix, probably some eggs, definitely a bowl, a lot of bowls, food coloring, a mixer… look, you know how to make cupcakes already probably, right?

For these particular cupcakes, you’re going to want white cake mix (it makes the colors pop better). So, you’re going to need egg whites. Do you have one of these?:

If not, get one. You hang it on the edge of the bowl, crack the egg into it, and it separates the white from the yolk. But you need this specific one, because it has a face on it, and it’s shaped like an egg, and you can pretend you’re committing some kind of sick, cannibalistic torture/murder while you’re doing it because look how goddamned horrified it looks!

Okay, so, now you’ve made your cake mix as per the directions on the box. Now you have to color it. This is where the “definitely a lot of bowls” part comes in:

I like to go with four colors. More than four, and your cupcakes will probably turn out too big. I recommend Wilton’s icing colors for this job, because they’re gels, they incorporate well, and they don’t make the batter runny or anything. But as you’ll note, I also used some non-Wilton’s because they’re lurking in the background.

First, you’re going to put down a single color in your baking cups or prepared baking pans (but use cups, nobody wants cupcakes you put your fingers all over). You’re not going to fill them; just use enough to cover the bottom.

You’re going to continue filling the cups and getting batter all over your stove top by carefully dolloping a little of each color batter into each cup- but you’re not going to overfill the cups, ya dig? You’re only going to fill these about 2/3rds of the way full. It’s hard to tell from the pictures, but I have faith you’ll figure it out.
I love this part of the process, because it looks like the imaginary food from Hook.
After you bake your cupcakes according to the directions on the box, and they’re all cooled and ready to decorate, you’re going to need frosting. I don’t like canned frosting, but if you do, take it out of the can and whip it up with your mixer first, so it’s fluffy and not so dense and grainy and weird.
This is the recipe I use for buttercream icing. It has never failed me.
Before you color all your icing blue- because it’s the sky, get it?- you’re going to reserve about 1/6th  of some of the uncolored icing in a decorating bag. Or, if you’re like me and you can’t find any of the fucking couplers for your bags and ACE Hardware in Hastings is already closed and your husband won’t drive you all the way over there to buy a piece of baking hardware at this time of night anyway, you use a sandwich bag with a teensy bit of corner cut off.
You’re also going to need some Air Heads Xtremes in Rainboberry flavor. If they don’t have this where you’re from, really any rainbow candy will work, you just have to get creative. You could probably do a 2d version of the cupcakes I’m making with Skittles or M&Ms or some shit. If you are using Air Heads, though, you’ll want to cut them in half.
Frost the cupcakes (and do a better job than Mr. Jen did) with the blue icing, then bend the cut-in-half Air Heads in an arc and secure/support with a glob of white frosting for clouds. Then when your amazed friends and family bite into them…
They’ll be like, “OMG you are so talented and creative! Those are amazing, how did you do that?” and then they’ll want you to make them and bring them to the family reunion or whatever, so maybe best to not share them at all.

EDIT: I wanted to add that I think the idea for these came from Pinterest, but they very well may have been from a cupcake book that I got a few years ago as a gift, then stupidly lent to someone because I will NEVER LEARN.