Comments on: Cupcake fail

By: Hydrolyze Guy

Hydrolyze Guy — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:48:11 +0000

Gday! Great concept, but could this truly operate?

By: Candy

Candy — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:21:30 +0000

Nora – Thanks for all the support! Usually all my fails are edible, except for this one. I thought it was funny that foodgawker.com actually posted the picture I sent them with the large word ‘FAIL’ on it! someone had a sense of humor! :P

By: nora@ffr

nora@ffr — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:58:05 +0000

haha!! funny post candy!! often this happens to me also :( its just one time candy :) you are a great cook!! :)

By: Candy

Candy — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:48:05 +0000

Kier – Crazies prefer instant potats, that’s who. Plus Aunt Vicky is awesome. Don’t you think real potatoes take the same amount of effort as instant? I don’t know, I’m assuming since you have to add water to the powdery stuff, and you also add water to boil real potatoes. Maybe it’s the timing that’s different? Or the laziness factor for mashing? Who knows.
Next time Chris melts the chips I’ll let him smash them while they’re frozen.

By: Kier

Kier — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:06:10 +0000

Hahaha!! The best fail ever! Tell Chris that Jared would have definitely tried to put the bag of melted chips in the freezer and smashed it to pieces later, too. For sure.

Who on earth prefers instant potats? (Yes. Po-tats). With 5 kids my mom used to make them all the time. Ugh. One time my Aunt Vicky (you met her today) babysat us for a weekend while my parents were away and wanted to make us a Thanksgiving meal. We helped by showing her where the canned corn and instant potatoes were, to which she said “WHAT? I don’t use that crap! We’re makin’ the REAL DEAL!”. From then on I never ever liked instant, and I make some damn good mashed or smashed potats. All thanks to Vick!

Good story, Kier. (Sorry, this was typed with one hand so ignore all typos or if it doesn’t make sense. I’m tired).

By: Candy

Candy — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:13:07 +0000

Namų – no problem! Thanks for letting me know, will be checking out your blog.

By: Namų Darkytoja

Namų Darkytoja — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:23:40 +0000

Hi, I hope you will not be against it – just wanted to say that I used one of your photos from this post in my blog. Surely, author and link included!

As my blog is not in English (Lithuanian, if being precise) I will just briefly mention that I am holding a contest on a biggest/most interesting/most shocking/etc. fail in the kitchen, so this post of yours fits very well as an example, inspiration, motivation and proof that fails CAN and SHOULD be demonstrated :)

So, I have no bad intentions :) Just wanted to tell and also say thanks for brilliant content and for sharing your fail :)

By: Candy

Candy — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 11:54:11 +0000

Kiara – like I said, bizzaro food world where everyone prefers pre-packaged crap to real, homemade stuff. what’s happened to the world?!

Courtney – Cupcakes tastes BAD. I don’t know why they tasted so salty. Must’ve been a combo. of things I did wrong. I can understand canned veggies, maybe it’s hard to buy fresh produce in some places, but in the US we have an excess of fresh food yet most grocery stores sell more pre-packaged foods vs. fresh food for some reason. I won’t name names (walmart).

Melanie – my husband tried to put the cupcakes BACK into the oven hoping they’ll rise up again! Didn’t work. No cupcakes for him :(

Sandi – Good point. It has been really humid and hot in the apartment…and maybe the hot bag of melted chips were just too hot in the cupcake batter?

Hummingbird – I lived on crap too, don’t get me wrong. The healthiest thing we made were probably tacos once a week. I’m not even nessessarily bashing boxed mashed potatoes, just the fact that people were so damn picky in college! No veggies, only certain meats cooked certain ways (deep fried) and a preference for pre-packaged. Ugh. I feel like doing a rant on cooking for people with food restrictions (not the allergy kind either).

By: Hummingbird Appetite

Hummingbird Appetite — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 11:13:45 +0000

Your post made me laugh. I lived on crap in college, too. Then when I learned to make Korean marinated chicken, I started living on that with rice and kimchi until I resorted back to crap.

By: sandi

sandi — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 02:34:15 +0000

So, if it really WAS 90 degrees out when you baked, it’s possible your oven was too hot. This has happened to me when I bake in hot weather (we live in the PNW and there is no AC).

It’s a very sad thing.

By: Melanie

Melanie — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 02:14:23 +0000

Your poor cupcakes! Few things upset me more in the culinary world than when my potentially brilliant plan fails. My poor husband chokes down anything I give him, but he always tells me whether it’s a recipe that should go back to the drawing board or be repeated. I like a man who pulls no punches when it comes to comida.

By the way, I wonder how it would work if he did try to cool-off-&-hammer-into-bits method…

By: Courtney

Courtney — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:02:15 +0000

What did the cupcakes taste like? Sometimes my failures are failures cause there dont look good, but usually they can still be eaten!!! As for the potatoes, we call it Deb here in Australia and I didn’t mind it as a kid but now I much prefer the real stuff, although we have frozen mash, which is 10 time better than Deb, but still not as good as the real stuff. I just can’t stand canned potatoes! Who does that??

By: Kiara

Kiara — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:37:38 +0000

Oh jeeze. What nutters prefer that crud in a box to real mashed potatoes? For years I was convinced I hated them because all we’d ever had was the boxed stuff.

THEN I had real mashed potatoes…my family nearly ruined a fabulous food for me, hahaa.

By: Candy

Candy — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:01:46 +0000

Bonnie – thanks for coming outta the ‘creepy’ woodwork, haha! I sorta went crazy with all the tweeting today too, you picked a good day for following :P

By: bonnie

bonnie — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:36:23 +0000

candy, i found your blog through tastespotting, you are amazing!! i am following you on twitter too, just thought i’d put that out there so i feel less creepy. i would have picked your mashed potatoes, for sure. i have a husband who would have picked the instant ones, though, i don’t understand either.

By: Candy

Candy — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:33:13 +0000

I don’t know!!! I’m actually a really crappy baker. I’m not good at following rules, recipes, measurements. The only thing I’m good at baking is banana cupcakes. So I can’t figure out what I did wrong…probably a combination of things.
I lived off ramen noodles, discovered spaghetti O’s, but for some reason could not understand instant potatoes. You said tasted ALMOST like the real thing, so at least you know the difference!

By: Irish Pirate

Irish Pirate — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:25:23 +0000

Ok, so I’ll admit that in college, I pretty much lived off of four foods: easy mac, baloney and cheese, fluffenutters…and instant mashed potatoes. Add a stick of butter, some salt and milk and it was ALMOST like the real thing to me. The shame.

I have had NO success with any scratch made chocolate cupcakes, you can ask JB. They either overflow or don’t taste right. Plus, it seems that oven temp really has quite a bit to do with how they rise and opening the door too soon is a big no no…or so I’ve read.

The melted chocolate technique looked really promising though! Maybe it was because they melted in the bag that gave them the weird taste??

By: Candy

Candy — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:19:25 +0000

Hahaha. I’m sweating just looking at that. Oh wait, it’s like 90 degrees in here, that’s why I’m sweating.

By: April Cavin

April Cavin — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:00:13 +0000

Your pics of pouring the melted chips are priceless!