Halloween Cupcakes & the Tale of Untintable Buttercream

Have you ever had a baking experience that pretty much start to finish was a disaster?  I promised my friend at work that I would bring in cupcakes the Friday before Halloween. This turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.

I decided to make mini chocolate cupcakes with swiss meringue buttercream tinted orange, purple and green. I’ve made the Cake & Commerce Chocolate Cake recipe a dozen times and it’s delicious so I used that again. I baked over 6 dozen mini cupcakes and when I took them out they didn’t look quite big enough but I hoped it was that I hadn’t put enough batter in the cups.

While they cooled I got started on the buttercream. I had actually remembered to soften the unsalted butter for this so I had a good start. This all went downhill when I divided the icing for coloring. I first tried to get a nice bright green. I had been to NY Cake the previous weekend and purchased some new gel food colors. I added some mint green…some more ..some more…some more. The leaf green…a ton..and yellow. This icing just wouldn’t take color! I think I used an entire small bottle and got a mud green. Yikes. The orange was a similar experience. Lots of yellow and red and all I got was pink. The only thing that worked well was the violet.

Determined I started piping frosting on the cupcakes. My mom “tested” one for me and said it didn’t taste right. So I looked and the color is wrong (too light) and it looks more like a brownie. Turns out I used baking powder instead of baking soda.  Have I mentioned how many times I’ve made this recipe? Lots!

I decided to continue decorating since it was all made and then if edible, my family could it them. But I still needed cupcakes for work.

Friday morning I got up an hour early and baked more cupcakes – this time sticking to standard size to save time. I ended up using powdered food coloring and dusting them with black glitter sprinkles. These were delish! I got lots of compliments from my coworkers.

On a side note, my family did eat all of the disaster cupcakes. My brother even commented that they were awesome. They did taste good but didn’t look right, and I guess I’m just one of those people who won’t present things to others if they aren’t perfect.