Kitchen Adventures

This one is for you Mom.
Starting about a month back, I daydreamed of a cupcake mobile.  I could park near busy downtown areas, office parks, and playgrounds and sell my goods to anyone with cash and a sweet tooth.  Cupcakes are very trendy right now.  I watched a few episodes of Cupcake Wars on FoodNetwork.  Those people can bake their tails off.  They just come up with recipes on a whim and totally amaze the judges - most of the time.  So I gave it a shot a couple weeks ago.  I made pink lemonade cupcakes.  The cake wasn't quite moist enough.  The icing was sickeningly sweet.  I had to scrape 2/3 of the icing to make them palatable.  Luckily I only made mini-cupcakes.  The ratio worked out.  My co-workers seemed to like them all right.
I spent some time surfing the web looking at different recipes and reading some blogs, making notes.
I was inspired by this new concept - cupcakes with filling.  No, not like ding dongs or twinkies.  More sophisticated like.  There were two methods out there for inserting filling.  One, use an apple corer and remove a bit of cake, then insert filling.  Two, use an implement like a pastry bag attachment or ketchup bottle to inject filling.  I found a well rated recipe for raspberry filling.  It called for shortening, powdered sugar and real raspberries.  You can't go wrong with shortening.  Then I found a standard cream cheese icing recipe from another site.  I personally love bagels with cream cheese and raspberry jam - the perfect combo, in my opinion.  Since I was going to be making filling and icing from scratch I allowed the use of a box cake mix.  I made the cupcakes easy enough.  Then I made the filling.  The shortening with powdered sugar and fresh raspberries didn't really blend.  It looked kind of separated but it tasted really yummy.  Good thing it's filling and not readily visible.  I filled a squirty bottle and went to work.  It was hard to tell how much was going into the cupcake.  Time to make the icing.  I totally should have paid attention to how many cupcakes it was for.  Oops.  We now have a ton of cream cheese frosting in the freezer for future use.  : )
Adrian was the first to taste the raspberry cupcakes.  He made a face that I immediately thought was a bad sign.  Then he said it might have been the best cupcake he ever ate and requested a second one right away.  Phew!  After cleaning up I sat down to eat one too.  Wow, it really was awesome.  Of course this meant I couldn't take the entire lot to work.  We had to selfishly keep some.
I presented them to my co-workers.  You know how people just say, "those were good" and they're being polite or just generally pleased with it.  These got rave reviews repeatedly. (I heart alliteration)  "They are so moist" (I attribute this to the shortening from the filling soaking in to the cake)  "I don't normally like icing, but this so good!"  (That would be the ridiculous amounts of butter and cream cheese)  People want more, soon.  It was suggested that a challenge another girl at work who is a great chef.  They think we should have a bake off on alternating days.  Oh boy, that might be a little much.  I wonder what other combination of flavors I can create.
Oh, and I also had my merit review today.  Apparently I am awesome at my real job too!  I will be getting a few more bucks to pay for more baking supplies.  : )