Making the Internet My Accountability Partner

I’ve had a lot of recipes bookmarked lately. For various gifts, both during and after the holidays, I’ve given homemade baked goods. In searching for the recipe that suited the receiver best I found a number of recipes I was personally interested. The one I was most excited for, and would be the easiest ingredient wise, was this Caramel Apple Cupcake recipe from Pioneer Woman.

It was really nice to get up early-ish on a Saturday, hit the gym, and come home to bake. The recipe was very easy to follow, especially now that I have an electric mixer. Side note: this endeavor to bake more led to a number of impulse-ish purchases, which I will get into later, but this electric mixer actually was a hand-me-down from my mom who wasn’t using it.

Back to the recipe, I had a lot of fun making it. The batter was straight forward and so was the frosting, or so I thought. Everything was going very well until I tried to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes. The cupcakes had been cooling for about 45-50 minutes and certainly felt room temp. The icing went on ok but it didn’t hold its shape from the piping bag, which yes was just a ziplock with the corner cut. The icing was very runny and inevitably started spilling over the edges of the first couple cupcakes before I corrected how much icing I was putting on. But then the baggie came unzipped and icing was spilling over onto my hands and I started getting flustered so I rushed through the last couple cupcakes to use up the icing that was still in the bag.

Out of the fifteen cupcakes I made I was able to ice 11 of them with that bag. Nine as you can see were put in this travelling case (also a hand-me-down) and shared with my boyfriend’s family. Three, made of two of the ones iced from the bag and one I had to ice with a knife, were left in my fridge to be shared with my roommate. This leaves three that I chose not to frost that morning. I left them unfrosted in the cabinet and saved the leftover icing in the fridge, I had to leave the house for a planned meeting with my boyfriend and his family.

The drive down gave me time to consider what I did wrong. The only thing I can think of is that the recipe encourages you to adjust the ratio of powdered sugar and cider based on how think or runny you want the icing to be. Since this was too runny for my liking, I thought I would mix up the left over icing with additional confectioners sugar. Except when I got around to it the next day, the icing was hardened from being in the fridge and I thought that was the perfect consistency, so maybe I need to also chill the icing next time.

This endeavor has created a lot of want for new things. For example, I’ve found that a number of the recipes I like have needed just a bit of tweaking to meet my needs, which means that just saving the internet pages is not the most helpful to me long term. My initial impulse is to buy an aesthetic recipe book where I can handwrite (ideally in better handwriting than I have) each of the recipes that I like and have a collection that is tailored to my tastes.

As of right now I am pausing on that impulse, partially because of the already mentioned hiccup. In my handwriting this recipe book could never live up to my desires. The other reason is that I have a stack of unused recipe cards that I’ve had for years. They no longer match my personality, but they are perfectly usable. I figure I will challenge myself, likely not just this year but for a few coming years to use up and use these recipe cards. When I run out and need a new system I will then consider that I will have warranted investment in a better recipe book.

But I did promise earlier that I’d talk about impulse purchases I have made. As some of you might have guessed after the ziplock failed me, the most impulsive of these purchases was a piping set. While, I really only gave a couple hours of thought to the purchase, I do think it will prove to be a worthwhile acquisition. Aside from previously not having someone to pawn them off on, part of the reason I tended to stay away from making cupcakes, even from boxes and store bought icing, is that I never felt good about the way they look. Having food look good is part of the joy for me. Now that I have a piping set to play with you will likely see more cupcakes in the future.

Another of the impulse-ish purchases is one I had thought about for almost a week. As a teenager I had owned an apron but didn’t really use it much because I didn’t see the benefit at that point in my life. During recent baking sprees I’ve found myself wishing I had somewhere esy to wipe my hands off or had a pocket to hold things I wasn’t using at that very moment but needed to keep close. So I bought an apron again. I’ve only had it a couple days, but I already see the benefits, including more motivation to bake, and look forward to this being a staple to use for years to come.

The last related purchase was one I thought about for a couple of days. In some circles it would be considered an impulse along the same lines of the piping bags. I have not yet proven I would use it enough to warrant buying, but I’m hoping that by owning it I will use it. And that is silicon baking cups. My roommate and I own one package of paper cups which I intend to use up, but long term I know that having the reusable option will be important to me.