Cupcakes Horror

I never liked baking. I don't bake nor do I have the flair for it. But for my best friend's sake, I attempted. I wanted to surprise her for her 25th birthday. So that's what I did (Bad move!) So a week before her birthday, I practiced making some cupcakes..I bought the ready-made cake mix - Betty Crocker's Chocolate Fudge to accustomise myself. My aunt helped me cause I don't even know where the bake tins, mixer and ingredients are kept!

So, my friend loves the song Pokerface by Lady Gaga - so that's the theme I went along with..make some cupcakes and decorate them with shapes Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs and Spades ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ ..boy was it difficult. So I tried anyway..

and this was how the 'practice' cupcakes came out to be:

Looks so weird n kiddy lol

So last week was her birthday and I was geared up for 2nd and final attempt! On Thursday I was supposed to get that cake mix after work. But something came up at work and I hadn't the chance to purchase it. Rang my aunt (my baking surgeon haha) and she was like: NO WORRIES, I'll teach you how to make a cake from scratch.

So that's what we did. The mixing machine HAD to spoil midway through the mixing!! We had to manually stir the mix till it became smooth.

We made it!

Out from the oven. Phew it baked alright!

Now for icing..Okay..with the practice cupcakes I used lime juice and icing sugar..but my mum recommended making "Royal Icing" for the base as the white is really, well.. white. But the process is pretty tedious! You need to beat egg-white and icing sugar till they become creamy like this:

Time to dress up the cakies:


After 4 hours.. here's the final results (some of it):Ofcourse, the drama doesn't end there..after a day in the fridge (I wanted the icing to dry up)..I took the cupcakes out..OH NO!!!! the top icing melted a little due to the change of temperature.and the colours started smearing =(
I rang my aunt and we started
OPERATION SALVAGE THE CUPCAKES immediately! Took out the top ones (Hearts, Spades, Clubs and Diamond - they were the worse ones..) and changed the royal icing to not so royal haha..aka mix the icing sugar with water..the colour runs less that way..anyway..the reworked ones look so weird..but I had to give it to her anyways haha
I've to think of colour coordination in the future..it looks rather dull to me:

Then the die decided to melt!! I had to reshape it in the nick of time..

Birthday girl with her cakes
I shall redeem myself!!!!!!