Flying Cupcakes

Last night was a bit of a disaster actually. During daytime I work as a nurse in the operating theatre and today we had a big day at the office. So I thought I could bring something for morning tea. It's always good to please the doctor, isn't it?!

Paul had to work late, so I had the kitchen to myself. (It's always better to screw up alone...) One of my colleagues has a gluten allergy and I decided to bake something gluten free. I quickly googled for a cupcake recipe and used the one from http://www.vanillacupcake.co.nz/

(Looking back it might have been a better idea to look for a gluten free option, but hey I'm a dummy and for some reason I like to do things the most difficult way possible!)

I must admit, I've never made cupcakes before. I always thought it was more of a girly-girl thing. Turns out I was completely wrong, it's a true art!

I planned on a quickie and bought an easy-to-make-failing-is-not-an-option packet for the normal cupcakes. You only have to add milk, eggs and oil and voíla, piece of cake you would think. Only this ready-to-make mix was for a cake instead of cupcakes. But how hard can it be?! According to the directions I had to pour the cake in the tin and bake in the oven for 60 minutes on 140ºC. So I decided to pour the mixture in little cupcake cases instead and baked it for 20 minutes. After 15 minutes, the cakes were still very wet (almost liquid), so I decided to increase the temperature to 180ºC. This helped cooking the cakes, but the mixture turned out to be too moist and this is the result:

So far my first ever made cupcakes...
I tried one myself and the dog was quite happy to sacrifice herself for the rest. To be honest, the taste was not too bad. When I read the recipe from the Internet site, it turned out they put the paper cupcake cases in a muffin tin. This really helped the cakes shape nicely. OK, useful tip that I discovered áfter things went wrong.
Next step was the gluten free cakes. I substituted the self-raising flour for rice flour and 1 tsp baking powder. But as I discovered along the way, rice flour works a bit different than ordinary flour. The first batch was bubbling and foaming like an erupting volcano (or something like that), the second one needed twice the amount of cooking time and finally, third time lucky, the last batch came out quite nicely. Well, good enough for my standards anyway.

After three gruelling hours, both the dog and I were nauseous of eating all the 'miscarriages' and I had had enough of it. It felt beyond humanity! At one stage I really felt the urge to see if cupcakes can fly... I poured the last batch of mixture into a 20cm round cake pan and threw it literally in the oven. I quickly made some icing and tried to decorate the tops. I decided to sprinkle some rainbow strands over the cakes to cover up the chaos underneath it all.

So no more cupcakes for me. Done and dusted! And the worst thing of all this is that I almost missed Desperate Housewives!...

P.s. Everybody said they loved the cupcakes and by the time I went home there were only three cakes left. I'm not completely sure if they were truly honest or just being polite...