1 down, 174 more to go

SIX HOURS. One, two three, four, five, SIX hours. This is how long it takes two idiots to make Martha’s Wicked Witch Cupcakes. And not all 24 kupkakes like the recipe predicted we could make. No, we only managed to make 8 actual witches. I don’t feel like doing the math and carrying the 1 right now but I know that is a ridiculous amount of time spent on each kupkake. Sadly, time was not our only issue. Measuring, lack of utensils, the absence of peel and eat licorice, and the decision to start in the Halloween chapter as opposed to the Easy 1st chapter all contributed to this debacle.

How do we convey our baking ignorance just in case “six hours” hasn’t set in yet? Let’s start with an exchange of texts between Suzanne (standing in the baking aisle of Michaels) and Tana (probably sitting in the living room of her house):

Suzanne: I may be in over my head here!
Tana: Oh no. What are you looking at?

Suzanne:

Not sure how these are to be used in baking

Tana: I know how they are SUPPOSED to be used but I have some other ideas as well.
Suzanne: The tips and couplers are making me nervous. I need to come back to Michaels with you.
Tana: Couplers? WTF are those? This adventure is not going to end well.
After a few minutes of no response
Suzanne: I had to peace out of that joint, now I’m at Dollar General!

Come to find out “couplers” are quite the big deal when it comes to decorating kupkakes. Who knew?

Not us.

Luckily this recipe did not call for the use of couplers. This is where our luck ends though. The witches were made from the One Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes and Swiss Meringue Buttercream Icing recipes. The chocolate part was easy but now we are nervous about the fact that Martha had to distinguish it was made in “one bowl”. What are we to expect from the rest of this cookbook? This part was a little messy but Suzanne never lets anything stay on her countertops for more than 3 seconds so she spent most of her time shadowing Tana with a wet cloth. The icing on the other hand was absurd. The ingredients were; 5 eggs, 1 cup sugar, itty bitty bit of vanilla, and FOUR STICKS of butter. Never again. We usually like our friends and family and we feel it is just rude to make them eat this much butter. By the way, when you ask Suzanne to cut the butter into small pieces before adding them to the mixer, she also arranges and plates them.

Thanks Suzanne but a small bowl would have also worked!

So after hours of prepping, measuring, mixing, baking, and assembling this is what we came up with.

Not bad but not very Martha either. And again, you will only count 8 witches. The rest of the kupkakes ended up looking like this.

These were also the only edible ones since they only had half a stick of butter per kupkake unlike the actual witches which were made up of 6% chocolate, 4% nasty black licorice, and 111% butter. I hope that adds up right.

This is where the witches slept at night so Suzanne’s cats wouldn’t eat them.

We just might be geniuses after all.