intro and cupcake disaster

Hello Everyone! I thought I would start this thing out with a little of my baking/cooking history. 

One day when I was about 6 I woke my mom up and asked her to turn the oven on for me because I had a cake/pie/thing to put in it, which I had made completely from scratch and topped with multicolor mini marshmallows. It didn't taste half bad. I continued to do things like this for a few more years. Then I ventured in to making dinner for my mom and dad, which usually went okay. I do have one memory of making a rice and lemon oven baked chicken breast, that I brought to the table half cooked, which my mother quickly brought to my attention (luckily no one had eaten any of it yet) That ended in tears and my father finishing off the chicken on the stove. The next few years continued on like this and I didn't do much baking or cooking. Then one day I got the brilliant idea to make biscotti. I had to get the very old kitchen aid stand mixer off the top of the refrigerator and wipe off the thick layer of dust before I could start. I had everything ready and it was going well. That is until the mixer started smoking. Even with that setback the biscotti turned out pretty good. Then we moved to a new house, with a big kitchen (and a new mixer.) and I didn't cook that much, partially for fear of dirtying a new, clean kitchen, which is something I am fantastic at(the dirtying part, that is) There were a year or two of cookies and failed attempts at scones. Then in the start of 2008 I decided I was going to expand my kitchen knowledge. I made Easter dinner for my family and grandparents. Some very messed up cupcakes. Some very good cupcakes. Some not so good lemon meringue pie. And some fantastic granola. 

The good cupcakes!

The bad cupcakes...

I made Chockylit's Vanilla-Cherry Cupcake recipe for Easter this year. I was so excited for this, as they looked amazing(and they tasted even better then they looked!) I decided to also make them in chocolate(as you can see) I had everything ready and going and baked a batch. Failure. They looked like the second picture. Now I do this about 6 more times, and each time I end up with these weird terrible cupcakes. So I blame the recipe and try a cupcake recipe from Emeril's Theres a Chef in My Soup and the same thing happens. So I decide to take a break and make the frosting, even thought I have no edible cupcakes. I go to the pantry to look for the powdered sugar. I don't see it. I go back out and look on the island, and there is the powdered sugar, which I had been using as if it was flour for all of those failed cupcakes. I just about cried. But I wasnt going to let that stop me. I picked back up where I left off(using flour this time) and ended up with the lovely cupcakes you see in the first picture. The ones in the front with the cherry's on them are the Vanilla-Cherry and the blue ones in the back are plain chocolate. Sorry about the not so great iphone pictures. 

-Sydney