Bacon, Beestings, and Beatrice

The week came to a sugarless close just in time to start the creating process again and to let the Halloween festivities begin, aka hours of Halloween 1,3,4, and H20. After much contemplation during the week I decided to grade all creations on flavor and fluffiness.  I began the weekend with the usual run in to town for supplies and was excited to explore flavor and fluffiness.  The same thing that pushed me in to that bakery the day this all began pushed me to find the perfect rubber scraper leading to a stumble upon my ultimate dream mixer.  I am fairly certain I came out of the womb demanding a Kitchenaid and now I finally had one!  Let the creating begin!!!!

I broke Beatrice out of the box in time to start a batch of double chocolate cupcakes with a hearty heap of orange cream cheese frosting.  The adventure began after discovering I bought unsweetened dark chocolate, which if any of you have tried it will make you feel like your mouth is going  to fall off.  I doctored up the melting chocolate and butter with sugar in my first successful attempt with a double boiler and the beauty went off without a hitch.  The orange frosting complimented the richness of the Dutch coco and the "make your mouth fall off chocolate." I used orange zest and the juice of half an orange for the frosting and I believe on the next go around I will only use the juice, the zest made it a tad bitter.  The cake was a hearty cake that could withstand the weight of a heavy royal or buttercream icing and fell short on the fluffiness scale but excelled on the flavor train.

Day two was and will remain Murphy's Law Day. The first recipe consisted of grinding cardamom seeds, making chai tea, and dumping every spice in my pantry into Beatrice.  The smell was incredible. The chai filled the house and I am fairly certain that is how the North Pole smells.  Riding with my head high I mixed, wisked, and got down and dirty.  Anxiously I turned the light on in the oven and my heart dropped as the centers of my tiny beauties collapsed on what I believe was my overly large head. They came out of the oven, cooled, and were smeared with white chocolate frosting.  My crowning glory had been in the fridge marinating all day and atop the white chocolate sat my candied bacon.

In between batch number one and batch number two my black lab Bodhi managed to get in to a sleeping/dying den of wasps and Justin and I noticed that he was starting to get well.....lumpy.  His faced looked like the kid off Mask, the Cher version. His jowls got so fat he looked like Lisa Rhinna.  One emergency trip to the vet and another batch of collapsing cupcakes and this gal was ready to hang up her pearls.

But, being the relentless searcher I am I continued on.  The second chocolate cupcake used coffee and coco powder to create a runny batter which caused me to second guess adding the coffee, but I charged ahead refusing to give up my pearls.  A couple trials and several errors and my table was littered with cupcakes waiting to be frosted.  Atop the fluffy chocolate cakes I worked on my frosting roses with a simple buttecream dyed for the holiday.  The final FF for chocolate number two, fluffy awesome cake and a chocolate flavor that resembled a boxed cake mix.

The final consensus of the weekend, Chai tea, white chocolate, and bacon is something I will be dreaming about for months.  The journey to create the perfect chocolate cupcake is going to continue. Lastly, if you stick your melon in to a bush and it stings you once, get your face out of there so you don't have to go to the vet on a Sunday.