Anatomy of a Cupcake

This one's for you, cupcake.

Wikipedia defines a cupcake as a small cake designed to serve one person, frequently baked in a small, thin paper or aluminum cup. Mentions of cupcakes can be found as early as 1796, but it was in the 19th century that the treat got its name. Before muffin tins were available to the masses, these individually sized cakes were baked in pottery cups such as ramekins or other molds, thus taking their name from the cup they were baked in; the name stuck, and now the term is used for just about any small cake.


On Halloween, I succeeded in creating the most amazing cupcakes known to have existed. They were amazing. There was magic in each sinfully moist, pudding-filled bite. It was "Om" with foil wrapping.

So yesterday I attempted to recreate said nirvana with my toddler. We put the cake mix into the bowl. I let him pour in the water. Together, we cracked three eggs. Then, we took turns stirring the batter.

Then I lost his attention (damn you, Caillou!) and put the batter into the muffin tray by myself.  Mom always gets stuck with the boring jobs.

It wasn't until 20 minutes later, when I had pulled my trays out of the oven that I realized I had forgotten one simple ingredient: cooking oil. I had, in fact, had a rather detailed phone discussion mere hours before the batter was made about whether the oil was, in fact, still good (it was) and so for me to forget it after, for all intents and purposes, standing up for its honor, really made me feel stupid.

My cupcakes sure did look like cupcakes...they just tasted like sugary cornbread. They were also mostly stuck to the non-stick, silicone bake ware. This made them totally unworthy of the vanilla pudding I intended to inject them with.

Don't look straight at them, they'll turn you to stone

So I made more batter (correctly) and stuck in the fridge.

Today, I tried again. I emptied the batter bowl.

Somebody's gonna have to wash that

I divided it into all the cute little silicone muffiny-type-cupcakey-things I own.

Don't fight it, you love the cow

And shoved them in the oven. With loving care, of course. As much care as one can take when shoving.

Not as dramatic as I'd hoped

Because I varied the sizes of the cupcakes, I almost lost a few of the smaller ones while waiting for the biggins to finish. I rescued them just in time.

No one gets left behind

While the cupcakes were cooling, I took the cream cheese frosting and added food coloring to it - since we colored the pudding filling green, what say we make the tops purple?

The necessities: sugar, water, fruit juice, wine, butter substitute, and ketchup.
We don't eat solid foods here. Except cupcakes.

Once the cupcakes were cool enough to handle without breaking, I filled a pipette bag with the pudding and filled each cupcake with yummy.

Food porn

Then, I filled another pipette bag with frosting (but, since I only have one REAL pipette bag, this time I used a Ziploc bag and snipped the ends) and put some on each little cake.

If you look at is cross-eyed and sideways, it looks like a flower, no?

AH....No, wait...sprinkles!

Proof that my cheap ass bought clearance-bin Halloween sprinkles