day twenty-one: i bet you thought i wasn't going to post today

I have had a spectacularly long, not-so-great day. It started with a phone call Joe made this morning regarding A Very Important Financial Matter About Which I Am Going To Be Very Vague, and I was literally so anxious before I heard from him that I was shaking and thought I was going to throw up. When he finally called (and informed me that everything was, in fact, okay), I felt this incredible release of tension that was wonderful, but also made me suddenly just want to curl up and take a nap.

A little later, I was thinking about how stressed and tired I've been lately, and how I just need to do...something...to release some tension and completely take my mind off of everything. But Mother Nature must have been listening to my thoughts because mere moments later she was all like, I don't think so, you little whore. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

So then tonight, after dinner, I had to make food for Andrew's Thanksgiving potluck at daycare tomorrow. I'd signed up for little smokies and sweet potato cupcakes with marshmallow buttercream, a new-to-me recipe that I thought the kids would really love. The little smokies were easy, of course, but the cupcakes? Not so much. In the oven, they spread out way too much and sank in the middle and the insides were jiggly and raw, even after I cooked them five minutes longer than the recipe suggested. In a fit of desperation, I (oh man, you guys, I still can't believe I did this) took the pans out of the oven, scraped the half-raw cupcakes out of their liners and into a bowl, and mixed them all together again and tried to re-bake them as a cake.

Ha.

For a while I thought I'd get away with it. The "cake" seemed to be baking up okay in the oven, but when I tried a little piece after it had baked, the texture was dense and spongy and just odd. And then, when I noticed how runny and messy and sticky the marshmallow frosting was, I literally dumped everything into the trash. 

Epic. Baking. Fail. I'm a food blogger who can't bake. (That line is a lot funnier if you imagine me saying it like Ty from the movie Clueless when she says, "You're a virgin who can't drive.")

I started over and decided to make these instead. I made them last year for Andrew's potluck and everyone loved them, and I just should have made them in the first place. But because I'd just wasted three sticks of butter on the failed cupcakes/cake, I had to go to the store.

Where a lady driving one of those motorized carts ran over my foot. I'm not even kidding. (I'm fine.)

The doughnuts are almost done now -- I just have to roll them in butter and cinnamon sugar, and then I'm going to go pass out. Probably literally.

Valuable lesson learned: Never again will I try a new recipe for something like this. Tried-and-true is the way to go. Any other way just results in weirdly textured baked goods and lots of sticky surfaces in my kitchen.

Also? I'm totally leaving all the dishes for Joe.