Cake Turds & Other Misadventures

We've all had those days, you know the ones. The ones where you wake up thinking it's a normal day but within ten minutes its painfully apparent that nothing is going to go right for the next 24 hours. On these days, the best thing to do is get it over with quickly and go to sleep again so you can start fresh the next day. In my case, I had so much to do that there was even more opportunity for the universe to make things go wrong. After sleeping through my alarm, losing a stack of papers I needed to study for a final, and getting called in for a closing shift at the bar the night before my last exam, I thought cupcakes would be a good way to let off steam. Can't go wrong with something I can do in my sleep, right? WRONG. 

I know my day is going really badly if I can't even bake properly... I started off intending to make chocolate hazelnut cupcakes, and after getting everything ready realized I didn't have enough butter for the icing. Strike one. Then after putting the batter together, I realized I had approximately four cupcake liners left. Strike two. After going out to get these things, coming back and geting them in the oven, I realized that I hadn't been paying attention and had added baking powder to my dry ingredients... twice. Strike three, you're out. For those of you who don't bake, adding too much baking powder basically means my lovely little chocolate cakes exploded in the oven and then caved in on themselves. By the time they were cooked, they looked like sad little crispy volcanoes and I was about ready to stick my head in the oven with them. 

Not wanting to waste all that cake, which actually tasted phenomenal, I decided to try something I've never done before- cake balls. If you've ever seen them, they're adorable little balls of cake and frosting, usually covered in chocolate candy coating. If you look up how to make them, it looks like a childrens activity- Step 1) Bake cake and crumble it. Step 2) Mix in frosting. Step 3) Shape into balls & freeze. Step 4) Coat in chocolate and present amazing little treats to people who will ooh and ahh at the sheer cuteness of what you've made. I managed to stay on track until Step 4...and I think it's safe to say cake balls are really not my thing. I managed to get one or two passable-looking balls out of the entire batch, and the rest can only be described as cake turds. So here's my prettiest one (that's right, one , out of about thirty):

Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Cake with Nutella Buttercream, dipped in Milk Chocolate