Oh for fuck's sake

I had a crappy, stressful day at work. The best way I have found to deal with days like this is baking, and since everyone else at work was stressed, I figured it might be fun to make something I could bring in and share. So I stopped at the store and got all the ingredients I would need to make cream cheese cupcakes with cream cheese icing. I know, it sounds like a lot of cream cheese but I was hoping it would work anyway. Well. No, no it didn't work. First of all, the batter came out tasting...salty? Really? It's true.

So I added a little more sugar and more vanilla to take the focus away from that one note of saltiness. That seemed to work, and I found myself longing to eat a big spoonful of batter which is how I know it's going to make a good cupcake. Okay, problem solved. On to frosting. Dude, I don't know what planet the person who wrote this recipe was on, but the frosting just tasted like a big bowl of cream cheese. Again, not sweet enough. I ended up almost doubling the amount of sugar in the icing recipe and, again, adding more vanilla to round out the flavor. Perfect! So I'm all thrilled with myself and my flavor-adjusty ways when I realize there is an unwelcome scent in the air: something is burning.

Agh! I threw open the oven door and realized that yes, even my gas oven has hot spots and the cupcakes on the edges were browning way before the ones in the middle. I swapped the two cupcake pans and let them bake a little more, but some of them still got a little too browned on the bottom. I turned them out onto cooling racks (burned my finger...sigh...) and just got out of the kitchen for a while before I started throwing cupcakes against the wall in frustration.

I'm sure some of them will be fine and I'll probably still be able to share them with everybody, but on days like today when nothing works the way it's supposed to, it makes me sad that I can't even count on baking to go my way. Bah.

I took pictures but I am too tired to put them in the right places and such. Dear God let tomorrow be a better day. Seriously.

Update: Can I just say...best...cupcakes...ever. Even the burned ones. Also, I really need to invest in a cupcake carrier.