We figured that since we’re doing an issue all about holiday sweets, we should try to make some ourselves.
This Insider isn’t particularly well-versed in the art of baking, so I knew right from the get-go that there was a good chance I’d find myself in over my head on this one. I really couldn’t remember the last time I baked anything.
Nonetheless, being a good soldier I went for it anyway. My original idea was to try something from the latest Food section in last week’s Monitor. However, the recipe I was looking at called for several things I’d never heard of, nor knew how to obtain.
As a backup, I knew I had several boxes of cake and muffin mix in the cabinet, so I decided to try something along those lines.
While I was rifling through the rarely used baking cabinet, I found exactly what I needed to make this all work: icing and sprinkles.
The muffin mix (I went with muffins over cake because it was morning, and why not?) was nothing special – the Betty Crocker just-add-milk quick and easy kind (complete with imitation blueberries, mmm!), which produces six muffins.
I followed all two steps on the package before tossing the half-dozen into the oven for about 17 minutes. When I peeked inside, I almost couldn’t believe that I didn’t epically botch the whole operation – they actually looked great.
After staring in amazement for a few minutes, I pulled them out to let them cool. During this time, I scanned the definitely old bottle of icing for an expiration date – there wasn’t one, lucky for me.
Before the muffins were truly cool, I started applying some green icing to one of the cupcakes. The plan was to make a Christmas tree. The result was a very sloppy and drippy green triangle, which I disguised with quite a good helping of holiday sprinkles.
I decided at this point to let the rest of the muffins cool a little more before decorating them.
After a good 10 minutes, they were in good enough shape to work with. This time I went more deliberately with the icing bottle (no custom tip, just what the bottle comes with), making sure to make ridges around the edges so it actually looks like a tree.
This one came out pretty good, for me anyway. I decided to go easy on the sprinkles so as not to overload the cupcake.
In the end, everything worked out a lot better than I ever imagined.
