Red Velvet Cupcakes

AKA, Nasty brown volcanoes.

AKA, One more reason I shouldn't bake.

I don't know when I will learn that either baking at high altitude is not something I'm good at, or just baking in general is not something I'm good at. Either way. Disaster in the kitchen once again.

Ramon's birthday was August 18th. Being the loving, creative, and oh so good looking, wife that I am, I thought that I would put my creativity to work in the kitchen and make him a red velvet cake. Then I realized that I don't have round cake pans. I have everything, except that. So, I decided, oh how adorable would cupcakes be? Right? Wrong.

First issue. Apparently you need like 2 tablespoons of red food coloring. Apparently in one of those boxes of colors, the whole, entire, every last drop of the little squeeze bottle, only adds up to about 3/4 of a tablespoon. Apparently this is not enough for the cupcakes to turn red. They just turn like a turdy color of brown. De-lish.

Second issue. Apparently even if you use a high altitude recipe, that does not, in fact, give you a recipe for success. The batter tasted delicious, albeit ugly. The cupcakes went into the oven and started rising beautifully. Oh, I finally did it! was my overly eager thought. I walked away. Maybe that's the problem. Because, when I came back, I found volcanoes. What had once risen had now sunk. What's that phrase, the greater the height the harder the fall? I don't know, but that's what it looked like.

I kind of, and I use kind of verrrrrry loosely, saved them by filling them up with lots and lots of cream cheese frosting.

Now, Ramon is no stranger to my baking disasters. He usually responds in good husbandly form with something like, "No, honey, It tastes great." This time he calmly asked me, "When you bake, do you follow what the recipe says to do?" If it weren't his birthday, there might have been blood.

As I reflected (I say reflected. You say fumed. Semantics.) on his comment, I thought to myself. If no recipe recipe works wonders with chocolate chip cookies, then maybe that's the real problem. God is telling me to not conform myself to the measuring system of this world, but to make my own way!

I tried with muffins. It worked. They're delicious. I may never use recipes again.

Or, I might just start buying baked goods...