Hey Gwen ... wanna see my muffins?

Author's note: Since posting I've received a few messages from people saying they can't see the full post :( Apologies to anybody experiencing the same problem, being technologically challenged I simply don't have a clue what the issue is or how to fix it ... it seems you need to click on the actual post link (ie click on the post title) to be able to view it properly ... that works for me, anyway. If you still can't view it, let me know and I'll try re-posting it. Sorry folks x


'ello!

I know, two posts in one week, eh? I can almost hear that annoying French lady in the Ferrero Rocher adverts exclaiming "Ah Madame, Wiz ze blog posts yuh ah spoiling uz!"

The thing is my "Cake in the Community" care parcel arrived (Brief recap: the truly scrumptious Gwen posted about making Red Velvet Cake, which you can read here, I was intrigued and asked for the recipe but Gwen went one better and offered to send me a cake mix, which of course I eagerly and gratefully agreed to, having seen the ridiculously lengthy and complicated "make it from scratch" recipe) all the way from St Louis, and in record time! Gwen only sent it last week and given the general pantsness (hey! that COULD be a word!) of postal services these days I wasn't really expecting it until, oh, I dunno, 2011.

So imagine my squeaky glee when the postman delivered a parcel with my name on it!

First I had to deal with the Spanish Inquisition (Ha! Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! ... you know I had to do it, right?) i.e. my family, who wanted to know why I was receiving parcels from America, what was in the parcel (well if you STFU and let me open it you'd find out a whole lot quicker), who had sent me the parcel, was it a man or a woman (I could see my Mother planning an international wedding in her head) and had I joined some kind of religious cult.

So a couple of hours later ... I finally got to open my box of delights

Oooh!

The Swiss Family Manson crowded round to take a better look at the goodies within, but seeing a lovely mauve envelope in the bottom of the box I pounced on that first and sure enough it was a cool card from Gwen with a picture of the McDonalds sign the beautiful Gateway Arch on the front.


Here's what she wrote (click on the pic to see it in its full glory ... oh, and in case you're wondering, the picture is of the Armadillo groom's cake from Steel Magnolias, a classic example of Red Velvet Cake ... and not some grotesque animal autopsy) I heart this card, doesn't she have the coolest handwriting? ...


So on to the contents of the box ... this is what me and my mother and grandfather saw first ...

... I only wish I'd had a camera handy to capture the look on their faces.

Grandfather: But why is it ... er, urgent?


Haha! And it got better ...

... clearly Gwen has heard of my notorious baking reputation


Next came the all important chocolate mouse poo (as mentioned in the card) ...


... by this stage in the proceedings there was nary a whisper from the folks, I think they'd witnessed more f-bombs than they'd seen in weeks, if not months, chuckling quietly to myself and reflecting on the fact that silence IS golden in some situations I reached for the next delicious item ...


... Cupcake dicks? thought I, somewhat perplexed.


And finally, the lovely and ever-thoughtful Gwen had even sent the muffin cups! She'd literally thought of everything! (sadly, no f-bomb on these ... Americans must take their baking cups extremely seriously)
*Really wish I'd overcome laziness and given myself a French manicure now


Anyway, I could hardly wait to start baking, which no doubt would stun anybody who knows me into shocked silence. (I'm quite a good cook but I don't have a very good history where baking is concerned, invariably if I attempt to make cakes I end up telling friends that I made biscuits. Very flat, slightly grey biscuits. But that's better than very flat, slightly grey cake, right?)

So I got all my ingredients together, cake mix, vegetable oil, eggs and water and chucked it all in a bowl carefully beat it all together as directed and ooh'ed and aah'ed as the mixture turned a vibrant shade of red ...

Once the cake mixture was ready it was time to transfer it to the cups. This is an especially tricky stage if you suffer from a mild form of OCD; the compulsive urge to allot exactly equal amounts of mixture to each cup and to avoid at all costs any unsightly spills means that it can take a very (very) long time.

Ahem.

There was also a scary moment when I'd filled 12 cups and had another 12 to go, but on looking at the bowl I realised that its contents hadn't seemed to have decreased in volume one little bit! You know in the film "Jaws"? The "We're gonna need a bigger boat" scene? It was just like that.

In the end I filled 30 muffin cups.

That's a lot of muffin.

Next I popped them in the oven and was soon tormenting my family with the mouth-watering smell of freshly baking cake mixture. The house smelled just like you imagine those posh, show-home places they feature in magazines like "Country Living" and "House & Garden". All I needed was a twin-set, a cute little apron and a lobotomy and I could have been mistaken for one of those 50's housewife types.


Ping! 19 minutes later they were done to perfection (well, they weren't badly burnt or flat) ...



Then they had to cool. Do you know how hard it is to resist hot, delicious, freshly baked muffins?

Me either ... I just thought "Sod it!" and ate one. Self control is for ... people who aren't me. And I'm glad I did, because it was totally lush. Really light and moist, it just melted in my mouth. Almost like somebody who was really good at baking had made it, instead of me.

Once cooled it was time to add the cream cheese frosting (my Grandfather says I should give up any dreams I might have once cherished about being a plasterer) ...

... like my groovy cow cookie jar? (I'm thinking now that maybe I should have tidied up before I took these pics)


Next came the delicious "chocolatey mouse poo" sprinkles. It was at this stage that I came to understand exactly why the cream cheese frosting was so "fucking urgent" ... apparently unless you add the sprinkles straight after you've slapped on the frosting, the surface dries and your sprinkles have nothing to adhere to, leaving you futilely trying to get your mouse dropping to stick instead of just rolling straight off the top of the muffin and making you swear like Gwen a trooper and shouting "GAH!" a lot.

Finally though, I was all sprinkled out ...


At the end of a long but satisfying couple of hours it was time to relax and reap the fruits of my labour with a nice cup of tea and a copy of Steel Magnolias on dvd ...


In between blubbing at the sad bits in the film and stuffing my sticky little face with gooey muffins, I raised my teacup in salute to gorgeous Gwen who had single-handedly, and at an impressive distance of several thousand miles, given me an evening of fun and laughter (with the odd patch of sniffly, girly, sobbing).

So thank you, Gwen :) the only thing that could have made it more fun was if you'd been here too x





Ps: Bet you thought I'd forgotten the groovy little cupcake picks (not dicks as previously thought) ... not a chance. Here's some I put on a plate, ready to entice my family members and anybody else who happened to visit ... don't they look fun AND yummy?

And since I didn't realise it was my new blog-chum Jerrod's birthday until after the event, I designated one particularly fine muffin as being especially in his honour.

Happy belated birthday, Jerrod!