when life gives you crumbled cupcakes, make cakeballs. (also known as the very long post that doesn't say too much).

a couple of days ago one of our all-time favourite cast members turned 30. and at octave theatre, well, we celebrate milestones. even if there are only three people called for a rehearsal. so i went about making this hellish recipe for devil's food cupcakes (see what i did there?). and for the amount of butter, sugar and actual lindt chocolate that went into the batter and the icing, well, you'd expect them to taste... orgasmic. or at least good. and given that ella couldn't even identify what they were supposed to be, i'm guessing that this recipe will not be making its way onto my frequently baked list. 


anyway. instead of curving upwards like regular, happy cupcakes (an upside down smile, if you will), they totally flopped and caved in on themselves, creating some very sad looking craters (you might refer to them as upside down frowns...). and to make matters worse, the cupcake tops all spread out over the muffin pan and made for one giant, deformed cupcake top, connecting the twelve round little bodies that lay beneath. 


needless to say this impatient brute could not get them all out in one piece. so. i salvaged those that i could. and i did what i could with them (that is, to turn them into unidentifiable, weird-shaped brown muffin things with a chocolate freckle on top). and as for the rest, well, i nearly hurled the tin with the mess of crumbled cupcake stuck in its caverns at my kitchen wall. but i had already created so much mess with the recipe (like, we're talking six different bowls, some of them washed and re-used mid recipe... i'm normally a one-bowl-wonder kinda gal) that i was too tired/traumatised to think about washing down a wall of cupcake splatterings. 


(wow this is getting long). so instead. inspired by our special friend shara all the way over in san diego, i scooped the cupcake shards out of their cocoons, crumbled them into the bowl of leftover icing, and beat like hell. then, i took the sloppy mixture, rolled it into balls, and froze. today, i melted more chocolate, dipped each little ball in, and voilà. cakeballs. 



now, maybe i'm a bit behind with the times, because these cakeballs certainly feel very... "seventies novelty food". but i have to say, they were delicious. and moist. (and kinda weird, but for the sake of the blog and where this whole thing is headed, let's just pretend they were immaculate okay?). 


practically speaking, next time your cake flops, do this. it saves you from throwing out a perfectly good cakeball cake. and, metaphorically speaking, i mean come on... when your cake flops, make cake balls! it doesn't get more afterschool special than that. it's all about seeing the potential in our own failures. and not taking it all too seriously.


and that's the end of the (very long, overkilled) story.
and happy birthday to karl. you see what i went through for you?


-- R.