My bestest workmate, Wes, was out of the office for hip surgery for a good two months and he started back the other day. Considering my love of cupcakes, I scooped up on that opportunity to make some.
Unfortunately I did not take stock of my ingredients before hand, and we didn’t have any butter. I did find a container of vegetable oil so I decided to try a different recipe that used oil instead of butter.
I whipped up the batter, which was a lot thinner than most recipes I use, which made me a bit skeptical, but they looked great when they came out of the oven. Fluffy, lightly browned, moist, YUMMMM. I allowed them to cool and slopped some icing on them.
It is notable that my house does not have air conditioning and it is the month of June, which proves just how much I, either A, love my friends, or B, love cupcakes. Or maybe it’s a little of both. Needless to explain to anyone else who has baked in a non AC house in the summer, when I opened the oven to take the golden lovelies out, I nearly burst into flames.
The cupcakes cooled, well, sort of, on the counter. The kitchen did not. I used store bought icing, eeek, simply because the kitchen had gotten so hot, that I just couldn’t stay in there any longer.
But, alas, the cupcakes were ruined. :O(
Sniff sniff.
During the baking process, a tiny voice in the back of my head keep shrieking, “no no, don’t ruin the cupcakes! Go to the store and buy butter!” and “what are you doing!? Old veggie oil??”
But did I listen, heck no. I wanted cupcakes and I did not want to drive 20 minutes to town to pick up butter (or veggie oil that was processed in this century).
That voice tried to tell me when I picked up the veggie oil container that it was dusty, so it must be old. That I had no memory of ever buying veggie oil, nor do I remember seeing it on the shelf behind all the other stuff before. It tried again when I measured out the oil that it smelled strongly and was certainly not good. It tried again when I was mixing the batter, that I should not be able to smell the oil like I could. Again, it screamed when I took the cupcakes out of the oven and could still smell the oil.
The voice was so loud that I dreamt about spoiled cupcakes and making my workmates ill all night long. In the morning, I pulled the cupcakes out of the fridge (remember the kitchen was super hot, so the cupcakes needed the fridge to maintain their classic cupcake shape all night, otherwise they would have probably turned to pools of golden mush.). I unwrapped one cupcake and admitted to myself that there was a slight oil odor wafting off of it. I took a bite, and although the texture was pristine, and other than the rancid oil overtone, the cupcake was magnificent, the cupcake was most definitely ruined. The aftertaste was terrible and stuck with me for hours. Yuck. What a waste.
I took the cupcakes outside, unwrapped them and then tossed them to the chickens, who didn’t seem to mind the rancid veggie-butt-oil taste.
Although I knew that veggie oil spoils, and you never want to use old ingredients, be it baking powder or oil, I just wasn’t thinking clearly. Ill blame it on a cupcake-anticipatory induced lucidity combined with the extreme heat melting my brain.
Lesson learned, do not try to make cupcakes on the fly. Always check your ingredients first.
(and in restrospect I should have taken a photo of my chickens enjoying the cupcakes)
All Things Krista 