Sweet Disasters: The Time I Made Cupcakes (and they looked like poop)

Not so long ago I read an article regarding the merits of showing oneself as is. Meaning, not just the good and awesome, but the not so good and awesome as well. The point of this particular blog post was to illustrate how far bloggers go these days to make everything look perfect. We here at Hello My Sweet are guilty of this.

Jason and I try really hard to make our photos look perfect for when they hit the blog. So hard in fact, that when I realized that something has gone very wrong recently, I procrastinated the photo editing process for a long time, just so I didn’t have to be smacked in the face with my error. Putting this party off for as long as possible, was a subconcious effort however, and only after Jason asked me, “Are you unhappy with the way the party turned out? Why haven’t you edited the photos for it yet? You usually do not wait so long”  did I realize what I was doing. The poor man was feeling like he had messed up, because I hadn’t yet done my job. The part where I stare at the photos I have taken (over exposed, underexposed, blurry, you name it) and try to make them perfect in photoshop and ready for our blog.

You see folks, my error came in the cupcake decorating process this time. We made Milky Way cupcakes for a Retro Rockets & Rayguns space themed dessert table. Milky Way cupcakes consist of chocolate cake, with a milky way candy baked inside and topped with whipped chocolate buttercream and caramel drizzle. Sounds good right? Well leave it to me to make the delicious into the opposite. I baked the cupcakes, let them cool and commenced to decorating them with the buttercream. Everything was going according to plan, we were right on schedule. Only it wasn’t going well at all and I didn’t even realize it. I had chosen a wide round piping tip for the buttercream frosting process. I chose this because I wanted to keep it simple. This of course resulted in a fat swirl of chocolate buttercream. See where I’m going with this? Well I didn’t see it.

We placed them on the table and away I went taking photos. Fast forward 2 hours while I’m reveiwing the shoot on the computer monitor and BAM! It smacks me in the face. The cupcakes look like poop. And not poop in the metaphorical slang term sense, they are ugly. Oh no, no, no. Actual poop. A perfect brown swirl of chocolate buttercream “poop” on each and every one. I tried to tell myself it would be ok. But the more I looked at them, the more I saw just “poop.”

So this is just my little confessional today. I know I am not perfect. And most of you probably know it too. But in case you were in the mindset today of, “does this kind of stuff only happen to me?” I’m here to tell you, “Heck NO!” It happens to me too. And Jason. And everyone else. I bet even Amy Atlas has had her fair share of uh-oh moments.

But if you take nothing else away from this little decorating lesson today, just remember this:

Never use a round tip to pipe chocolate frosting onto a cupcake. EVER.


So tell us, what was your funniest baking or decorating disaster? We’d love to hear it; leave us a comment up top!

Shop Small Business: A Guide to Holiday Shopping on Etsy

For the second year in a row there is a new movement in Holiday Shopping. No, it is not the ever more popular "open on Thanksgiving night to attract even more buyers" ploy of corporate retail chains across the country. This movement is different. This inititative is the Shop Small Business day, planned for Saturday November 26th, 2011. It is sponsored by American Express and encourages shoppers everywhere to participate by buying their holiday gifts at small business retailers. This could be the shop around the corner on Main Street USA or an online shop presence on the ever growing website Etsy.com. Being a small business ourselves on Etsy, we are totally into this effort. In fact, if you like on Facebook or follow us on Twitter you may already have an inkling as to how popular we feel this movement should be. 

So in light of all this we felt we should kickstart things a bit with a little Etsy Gift Guide we put together. After browsing their website we came up with a nice list of gifts that are affordable, handmade or vintage, and easy to purchase, while supporting small business all at the same time.

Left to Right from the top of the image we have:

1. The Blonde Package - 5 Elastic Solid Color Hair Ties that Double as Bracelets from Mane Message This one is for the lady who keeps a hair tie on her wrist just in case of hair emergency.

2. Caramel of the Month Club 12 Months from Have It Sweet For the gourmet sweets connoisseur.

3. Felt Kindle Case - Kindle 3 Case - Kindle 3 Cover - Nook Case - Kindle eReader Covers - Kindle Sleeve from Kawaii Owl  Design This one is for the tween who just got a Kindle and needs to keep it protected instead of on any random surface it lands on! (We have a tween, we know their habits.)

4. Mini Cactus from Lost In Zen Perfect for a co-worker or boss, help keep that office Zen feeling going strong all day and decorate the desk to boot!

5. Light Grey Wrap Dress With Short Ruffled Sleeves And Shirred Skirt from Lirola This one is for you, or your sister or your BFF so they will always have something simple, comfortable and stylish to wear!

6. Garden Bon Bons - Herbal Tea Selection from Garden Bon Bons This is for the gardener and tea drinker in your life, she can grow it and then steep it.

7. Circa 1950s Vintage Crate from GoSeek For the collector, a vintage item to treasure.

8. Manly Man Soap Set - Natural Soap - Handmade Soap - Unscented Soap - Mens Gift Set from Rocky Top Soap Shop For the gentleman, father, brother or hubby, something to pamper himself proudly!

9. The Big Lebowski (Yellow) - Pencil Set from OneUpDesigns For the cult classic movie buff, a simple and hilarious gesture to stuff the stocking.

We hope you will enjoy browsing Etsy just as much as we do!

Use the coupon code SHOPSMALL2011 to receive 20% anything in our Etsy shop on Saturday Nov.26th!