Advice!

Here is some advice. Free. No charge. Gratis. Just for you:

Don't break your arm in three places while arm wrestling drunk unless you have someone willing to bake you cupcakes while you're in the hospital.

Just saying.



Those are Your Basic Chocolate Cupcakes topped with green Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and Harry Potter sprinkles in Harry Potter cups. Why green and Harry Potter? Why not?

I got home from visiting the hospital a bit after 1 AM, realized I couldn't sleep and was in the mood to bake, so I did.

I was always under the impression that ice cream scoops only came in one size. That's apparently not the case. The new one we got is huge and I can fill about two cupcake cups with it. Of course, it took me a while to realize that, so I ended up with a few muffin tops.

Also, my oven seems to be kind of fucked, so when the cupcakes were supposed to be done, they were still very wet in the center and the temperature was 340 instead of 350. I turned it up and left them in for a while longer and they seem to be OK.

This was my first time working with the pasty food coloring. It was pretty neat. I didn't know how concentrated it was, so I dipped a fork in the coloring, scraped the fork against the beaters, then resumed beating the frosting. It was pretty cool because the white frosting would turn really dark green around the beaters, then the color would slowly lighten and spread. I really like the mint green I got, but it makes me wish I had some mint extract to put in the frosting, making chocolate-mint cupcakes.

Also, I need to remember to use a bigger bowl next time I make that frosting. The beaters sprayed it everywhere, even when I tried to block it with my hands. I spent quite a bit of time cleaning up when I was done.

A friend gave me the Harry Potter sprinkles when I first got into baking, but I didn't know what I'd be able to use them for now that the series was over, so this was a good use. I bought the HP cups myself, on the cheap, to match them.

I had originally planned on spelling out GET WELL SOON in frosting on the cupcakes, but I miscounted the number of letters in the phrase and made two swirly cupcakes to use as spaces. Once I did that, I just did a bunch of other swirlies and wrote GWS (I couldn't bring myself to do one more swirl at 4 AM!). I really wanted to use the big star tip for the frosting, but it was upstairs and I was lazy, so I tried the small star. I think I would have been there until 6 AM if I used the small star, so I switched to a large crescent. The tip itself was pretty cool looking, but the icing was unimpressive. At least it was fast!

Naked cupcakes in all their nerdy glory:



Close up of the cup:



Spork 2000s: