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The Uncommon Life

Gift Lab #5: Kira’s cupcake craziness

June 9, 2010
Kira

1) Product Name: Cupcake Corer and Decorating Set

Cucake corer and decorating kit

2) Background Research: I made Irish Carbomb Cupcakes for St. Patrick’s Day, and while they tasted great, they looked really sad — frosting in clumps or sliding off the cupcakes entirely! I like making cupcakes, but I shouldn’t have to convince everyone that they are, in fact, edible.

3) Hypothesis: If I use the cupcake corer and decorating set, my cupcakes will look just as delicious as they taste.

4) Experiment: Make the chocolate buttermilk cupcakes with caramel filling and chocolate frosting from the recipe booklet included with corer and decorating set.

5) Results: I couldn’t help but tweak the recipe, so I used 2/3 cup spelt flour and 1 cup all purpose flour, instead of just APF. Who says that cupcakes can’t be good for you? Also, the recipe mentions 2 tsp of vanilla extract, but the instructions don’t mention when to add it to the batter, so I included it after I added the eggs.

Cupcake Corer Decorating Set

It’s entirely possible that I have a freakishly small cupcake pan, but I ended up with a surplus of batter for the 12 cups.

Cupcake Corer Decorating Set

The instructions say to divide the batter equally between the 12 cups, and so I did, knowing in my heart that they were much too full. I couldn’t just let that delicious batter go down the drain; no, I had to make MONSTER cupcakes. Do not do what I did. This makes the cupcake cores really difficult to extract, since you can’t push the corer down far enough before the base of the corer hits the top of the cupcake. I ended up pushing down too hard on the cupcakes, which leaves a flower imprint on the top. Luckily, the icing could cover that up, leaving none the wiser.

Cupcake Corer Decorating Set

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The Uncommon Life

Striking Out

June 8, 2010
Melody Lanes

Last Wednesday, I am proud to announce that I won the very prestigious worst bowler award when the UncommonGoods team went bowling at Melody Lanes. And let me tell you, the competition was fierce, given that only two people managed to get a score higher than 150.

kira

Also, many claimed that the greasy food (pizza, zucchini sticks and curly fries) made it difficult to hold onto the bowling balls. But in the end, no one could match my complete and utter lack of bowling skills.

food

In one round, I managed to heave the ball down the alley, only to have it end up in the gutter. No surprise there, except the ball was moving so slowly that it stopped and started to roll backwards! It lost momentum in the middle of the gutter, and our brave CTO Casey ran out to fetch it, not realizing that the floor is really slick! He didn’t fall, thankfully, since an injury might have made him the worst bowler by default.

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