Foiled Again!

Why am I so weak? Why am I so easily seduced by packaging and photography? Apparently, laziness rules my world. Okay, to give myself a bit of slack I will say that it isn’t just convenience that I crave. I think that when I don’t put the brakes on my imagination I get carried away into the fantasy that I create. The Practical and I have only a nodding acquaintance after all.

So what has caused this dark (well, milk chocolate) afternoon of the soul?

Believe it or not, cupcakes.

Yes, cupcakes. Those innocent little bakery treats. I have made cupcakes before and they really aren’t very difficult to pull off. Fussy, maybe, but not exactly something you need formal training to make. So why, when I know that homemade is almost always better, did I think it was a good idea to buy not one, but two different kinds of mixes?

I didn’t buy just any supermarket brand of cupcake mixes. I went “gourmet.” I fell into the trap…surely, they know something that this humble home baker does not. Surely, eleven dollars will lead to the cupcake of my dreams. Look at the perfectly decorated picture on the box. Imagine whipping together this delight in no time. Probably to serve for tea on the veranda: me in my pearls and favorite dress—Adam in a dapper suit. Yeah, right.

I made the first mix weeks ago. The Sprinkles mix came from Williams Sonoma and was packaged with an adorable container that is supposed to hold a single cupcake. I say supposed to because my cupcakes have been too big to put inside it. There goes fantasy number one…sending Adam out with an unmarred sweet treat for his lunch.

I chose the Red Velvet cupcake mix. Red Velvet is delicious, but messy. I think I made it from scratch once, but I am too clumsy to be trusted with that much food coloring. So, what could be better than a mix that has done the hard part? I still made a mess because I got some of the intensely red batter on me, but it was not a red dye bath. Overall, it was an easy dump and add and mix process. The finished cakes were…decent. They were a touch dry and the crumb was so fine that we had to eat them with a fork on a plate. Not exactly optimal cupcake consumption.

The part that I loved was the frosting. The included recipe wasn’t for the traditional frosting, instead it was for a cream cheese frosting. It is ridiculously rich, but so delicious. It is buttery, sweet, and tangy all at once. I saved that recipe and will use it again, though sparingly. This stuff isn’t for the faint of heart. The package also included Sprinkles bakery’s signature decoration: dots. They were indeed very attractive and made the cupcake look kind of professional. Unfortunately, the sugar (or whatever it is made from) is so hard that I think one could break a tooth on it. It didn’t really taste like much either, just a vague sweetness, so it was best removed before eating the cupcake. Cupcakes shouldn’t really require that much preparation before eating.

Ultimately, I rate the cupcake as a “Meh”+. If only the cupcake had lived up to the frosting!

That brings me to today and Ina Garten’s chocolate cupcake mix. This one was purchased at Crate and Barrel and features a lovely photograph on the attractive mix box. This mix includes three separate packages. It is your job to figure out which is which. Not a big deal, really, but sort of indicative of the whole process. If I wanted to fuss I would have made them myself from scratch. This mix requires you to put in part of one package with the butter and then add the rest in batches with water. The frosting requires you to melt a package of chocolate bits, cool, and then incorporate into butter and the contents of the third package. It isn’t difficult but there seem to be a lot of different steps. All of which would be fine…if the finished product paid off.

You might think that the rigamarole would yield a superior product: a gourmet product. In my experience that is not the case. Maybe it was user error because I did overfill the cups a little. However, I think that I don’t bear complete responsibility. The cakes themselves are extremely fragile. They couldn’t even hold up under the frosting before breaking up all over. That sort of nixes the possibility for in-hand eating. The frosting itself was oddly insipid. It tasted of chocolate but it was sort of muted and sickly sweet at the same time. The chocolate isn’t particularly high quality. The frosting certainly doesn’t taste as good as a ganache. If I am going to mess around with melted chocolate for my frosting, that is what I would choose to make. The cakes themselves also taste a bit dull. I would bet that your basic Duncan Hines, Betty Crocker, or Pillsbury mix would yield a more satisying result.

So, with less than stellar cake and so-so frosting I rate Ina Garten’s mix a full-on “Feh.”

I can only hope that I have learned a lasting lesson from this. Homemade is always best. I think I can remember that…

…until I make cornbread. This Northern girl likes her cornbread sweet and Jiffy Corn Muffin mix is the ruler of all in that arena (not to mention that it costs about a dollar). I guess some things live up to their promise.