Weeks prior, I'd scheduled a competition at work that I called "Spooky Food Day" where the only prize was bragging rights. And I had picked my entry. I knew the moment I saw them that I needed to make them. Skeleton cupcakes from Cookies and Cups. Things had been hectic and by the end of business that day, I knew I didn't have time to do them. Naturally, I went ahead and did them anyway. Here's how the eve of Halloween Eve went down.
7:30pm
I'm alone with a 3.5 year old and 6 month old while my husband is at a conference. This means I am making cupcakes from a box. While the toddler eats dinner (he requested marshmallows and we negotiated and landed on a Lunchable) I put the baby in a wrap and whip up the boxed cake mix. Don't judge.
8:40
The husband returns home and sees me dipping pretzels in white chocolate. He offers to go to the store for me to buy pre-dipped pretzels. I decide to be lazy on this front too and let him go. I was 11 in and already sick of it.
Plus they were really ugly.
9:00pm
While the husband is at the store, I start putting marshmallow heads on sticks. Since I had the white chocolate out anyway, I dipped the stick tips in it first, as though that's what I actually planned to use it for. It made me feel slightly more organized.
9:22
The husband calls from the store. They don't have white chocolate dipped pretzels but they do have dark chocolate. Or white star shaped pretzels with peppermint flakes. I debate whether I would like to have disgusting cupcakes by mixing peppermint with red velvet or weird looking brown skeletons. I opt for the brown skeletons.
A little later, I'm making buttercream frosting and run out of powdered sugar. I call the husband but he doesn't answer, so I text him. Around this time, I decide that dipping the cupcakes in sprinkles would be easier than shaking them out of the container, so I try to pop the lid off and end up doing this:
9:45pm
Husband returns from the store with the brown chocolate pretzels. I get mad and ask why he didn't answer his phone because I still need powdered sugar, but then he hands me a McFlurry, so I shut up and head off to WalMart. I think about how much I hate that place and this is the second time it's saved me in a late night baking emergency. I take a look and find 2 small bags of white chocolate covered pretzels left on the shelf, so the night starts looking up a bit. I have no pictures of the WalMart trip, but you might check out People of WalMart if you're interested.
10:10pm
I return from WalMart, start piecing things together, find it's a huge pain in the ass and curse myself for deciding on this project. Sometime around 11pm I decide that the skeletons don't need arms all that badly.
12:30am
I'm finally done
And here are the "rejects". I had run out of sprinkles (see 9:22pm) and white chocolate pretzels, so I had to finish out with chocolate.
It slipped my mind, so I don't have pictures of the competition, but there were some really creative entries in there. Someone on my team won, so I was pretty happy about that.
So that's that. I hope you're now inspired to bite off more than you can chew. I'm off to bed :)
