A DAY IN APRIL: STELLA IS 1!

My baby is 1. I still can't believe it. It's like we've always had 2 children, but at the same time sometimes in the mornings they're a surprise like "who let these children in our house?? where did they come from? why are they waking me up!!!?!" It was so fun putting her in the same onesie that Paisley wore for her 1st birthday! And of course Paisley had to be all fancy too in her cupcake dress. It is nearly impossible to get a good picture of the two of them...oh well. Their Daddy is their most favorite person in the whole entire world, and as you can see they LOVE HIM SOO MUCH. He gets smothered every day he comes home.

her most favorite place in the world

The cupcakes and her cake were a comedy of errors. As you can see, everything looks extra homemade! The vanilla cupcakes came out perfect-they rose beautifully, they didn't burn and everything was looking like it was going to turn out amazing. So I made the cake. I wasn't sure exactly how much batter a 6" round took so I looked it up and it said 2 cups...I'm thinking that's for 2 rounds (because it was for a 2 layer cake)...and maybe I just can't read...either way me and Wilton are in a fight. The first cake layer came out huge and took a long time to bake...so I attempted to even things out with the 2nd layer and do less...I don't know, either way I ended up with severely unequal, uneven layers, but at least they weren't burnt and they tasted good, right?

I then started making the frosting. I LOVE fresh strawberry frosting but it is a bit temperamental. I just made it a couple of weeks ago and it turned out perfect, thus renewing my strawberry-frosting-making-confidence. my mistake. I didn't realize this wasn't stiff enough until after I was halfway through frosting the cake (which I did let cool plenty long so I at least get stars for that, right?) Getting an already broken and misshapen cake to shape up is difficult with good frosting, and I would say impossible with runny frosting. Into the fridge it went. Unfortunately I'd already put the other portion in the bag for frosting the cupcakes so the cupcakes also went into the fridge with the hopes of freeze-framing the frosting.

Determined not to let the same thing happen to my chocolate frosting I made it ridiculously too thick and could not even get it to come out of the bag!! (Once again, put it in the bag before confirming consistency...ahh, life lessons).

In the meantime, for one reason or another ALL of my chocolate cupcakes came out caved in and stuck to the pan! The second batch was SO stuck I couldn't even get them out of the pan without completely destroying them so I gave up. I can't really complain too much because as long as it all tastes good, I will always stand by my baking...I just can't always promise perfect presentation.