Surprise phone call

Last week at work, I got a phone call, completely out of the blue.  It was Chuck, one of the audio engineers at VOICEcorps, and he was just calling me to tell me how much he had liked the Deviled Eggs, and all the other treats I bring in to the staff and volunteers there.  He took the time to look up my work number in the volunteer files, and called me just to thank me and compliment my baking skillz.  It absolutely made my day!

So, of course there was nothing else to do except make up a batch of cupcakes and take some to Chuck.  I made a batch of Betty Crocker yellow cake (I don't think I like Betty Crocker, but am reserving final judgement.  The mini cupcake liners peeled off of a bunch of the baby cupcakes again, and going back reading old posts, it was too crumbly once) and chocolate buttercream icing.

Chuck got 4 jars full of cupcakes, examples of which are pictured in this post.  Cheers, Chuck! 

My cousin Jenny, who, over the course of a week, actually did eat all six jars I mailed her, visited me from New Jersey this weekend.  She got another half a dozen jars, and of course, I put almond extract in the icing for hers.  Six jars = 12 mini cupcakes, and should be about a third of a batch of icing.  Except I used an entire batch of icing on her six jars and made a completely new batch, without the almond, for the rest of the cupcakes.

Lessons learned:  Don't rush the cupcaking.  I was a crazy woman on Thursday making cupcakes.  I could have made the cupcakes on Wednesday and iced them on Thursday, and would have been a lot less stressed.  Of course, the stress helps burn off the caloric intake from icing nibbling quality control.  Doesn't it?