Decor-ate

I don't cook as much as I used to and discovered this weekend that I am getting a little rusty. We had a surprise potluck for our accompanist at church; her baby is due in September. I made egg salad sandwiches since deviled eggs are a popular dish at our church potlucks. The sandwiches were fine. Even the ones I made with the heels of the bread were eaten, in spite of the fact there were two other plates of egg salad sandwiches, and two plates of deviled eggs. It was a high cholesterol Sunday!

I also made cupcakes for dessert.My vision was to to ice the cupcakes, make a nice flower from icing, and put a little plastic baby in the center. It had been a loooong time since I had done that kind of work, and I was never a pro. The cupcakes tasted good and the icing was tasty, but I tried decorating with the newfangled "icing in a container" and it was too soft. No problem, I thought, I will just spray it with some food coloring, put a sort of spiral design on it, and plop the babies in pools of icing in the center of each cupcake. That didn't look too bad. To improve on my improvisation, I decided to make a simple flower outline around the baby sitting in the pool of icing at the center of the spiral on the iced cupcake. It still was not too bad, even though it was a far cry from my original vision. I packed everything into covered containers last night so I could leave bright and early this morning.

When I opened the containers to set the cupcakes out, I realized my mistake! The icing was too soft for the project. The icing on the cupcakes had flowed together during the night, leaving me with lavender iced cakes sporting tiny plastic babies resting in pools of yellow. I set them out anyway because they tasted good and I had nothing to put in their place. Also they were chocolate and I was afraid to keep them in my household for my sweet tooth. That might have been my second mistake. All the cupcakes were eaten and there were several babies set aside near the dish. I only heard one person admit he ate the plastic baby, thinking it was hard candy.

I plan to get back to baking and regain my expertise.