Captain Oblivious In... The Unfortunate Baking Incident!

So, cupcakes.

[insert appropriate pause for those who know me best to start laughing, because they totally know what's coming.]

Cooking, I suspect, is easier to learn from someone who's good at it than from the internet. "Let's mix shit up and see what happens" is the motto of mad scientists, pyromaniacs, and your friendly neighborhood Maggie. But my dad says if you learn from something, it's not a failure - it's experience!

Things I learned today:

1. If a recipe involves four eggs, you probably need a bigger bowl.
2. Things rise.
3. Food colouring should ideally come into the picture before the paper cups.
4. Batter tastes really nice.
5. If you put the flour in too fast it gets all over everything.
6. Aprons. They're handy.
7. Wooden spoons are wooden for a reason.
8. It is actually possible to bend a fork with the amazing powers of my cupcake.

My mum's bit of advice from on high was to stick a match into one to see if they were ready. We couldn't find the matches, so my dad stuck in the pointy end of a paintbrush. Then we looked at each other and went "...um. But what does that actually mean?"

Stay Tuned for... Icing Adventures!

My Marvellous Cupcake Failure: Part Two, or, I Triumph

With the oven-mitts portion of the evening over and done with, I now had ten more-or-less normal cupcakes, one HUUUGE MOOOOTHEEERFUUUUCKEEER of a kind of blobby cake-like thing in a cup, four soft and green-splattered items which look kind of mossy but are presumably edible, and two rocks. Did you know the top of the oven is hotter than the bottom? (This coincides rather neatly with my thoughts on yaoi.)

I then proceeded to ice. Having run out of icing sugar (a tragedy - what happened to the days when I ate that stuff WITH A SPOON!?) I flung shit about a little in my cupboards and dug up a tube of premade icing. It had no use by date on it, so I pronounced it edible and set to. The instructions suggested a soak in hot water before use, but by this point mum and Timmy had come downstairs, so I had a brat running around trying to help and also my little brother. It was loud. I was tired. I ran the tube under the hot tap for a bit and soldiered on. Unfortunately it turned out that not only does insufficient heating make the tube kind of hard to squeeze, it also makes the icing very difficult to spread on the actual cupcake, and just a little too solid for the hundreds and thousands to get a good grip on it. They had no problem whatsoever, though, getting a grip on my kitchen counter, spoon, stove, pants, floor and surrounding kitchenware. I suspect I will be finding little red specks in my tea for a while.

But Captain Oblivious is not deterred by such measly obstacles! And so tomorrow I come to drama bearing slightly misshapen, occasionally green but decidedly tasty baked goods. Hurrah!

Enter Shikari and lolthulu

New band, guys! They're cute and British and both the lead singer and the guitarist that sings have really lovely voices when they're not screaming, which is just often enough in most songs for me to add them to my squee list. Have a vid! In fact, have two!

( Enter Shikari - Anything Can Happen In The Next Half Hour, and also Sorry, You're Not A Winner )

Also, ur sanity has a flavr nom nom nom.