Katie Creating: Easter Lemonade Cupcakes

Sigh.....

The best laid plans of mice and men are nothing compared to the visions of a baker.

A month or so ago I saw a recipe for Lemonade cupcakes, and ~~the hampster and wheel~~ my brain started working and I came up with the vision of these cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, tinted green and frosted like grass, with little egg candy like it's an easter egg hunt. Can you see it??? Cute, right?

Well yestersay, I sit down with the recipe again, and read through some of the reviews. Most of them were very good (which is why I picked the recipe in the first place) and there were a few that said they were too dense for cupcakes.

*****
Excuse me one moment while I rant... one of my pet peeves is when people comment/review a recipe and say in the recipe how they made this change and that change, then complain how it wasn't a good recipe and give it a low rating... you didn't follow the recipe!!! Grrr....
OK, I'm done .:steps off of soap box:.

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So, as I am mixing all the ingredients, I notice that its is a very thick mixture... way thicker than if I had followed the recipe on the box (it was a recipe which uses a box, and "doctors" it up). Little bells start going off in my head, thinking, "Hmm, this looks like it could be very dense, like those reviewers said", but I get them in the pan, and in the oven.

25 minutes later, I pull them out, and low and behold, they feel very dense... not light and fluffy like in my vision.

I let them cool, and do a taste test, and I am not happy. The flavor is great, but very dense, more like a brownie or muffin texture than a cupcake.

Now I did end up using them...the hubby convinced me they still tasted good, and the icing I had made was very good (cream cheese with a hint of lemon), so they got decorated.

This was the first time I used the "Grass" tip from Wilton (tip 233 if you're looking up by number). I looked at the how to online, and it looked simple enough. I had to play with the thickness of the icing. It said to use medium, but what I thought was medium seemed to thin. Today, when I went to decorate them, I'm not sure if the consistency was again too thin, or if my kitchen was too warm for the cream cheese, but again, they got a little melted look.

Overall, I was not very happy with them... I MAY have yelled at my husband, and even growled a little when things were not going as smoothly as in my vision (no worries, I have since apologized). Needless to say, I am looking forward to next week when I start my second decorating class to brush up my skills.

Here are a few pictures (no step by step this time, since I was too frustrated).