Adventures in Baking

For my dad's birthday last night, I made these Martha Stewart Mocha Cupcakes (I really ought to start branching out). Since my dad loves all things coffee-flavored, I thought these would be the perfect little treat for him.

I didn't mean to spend so much time in the kitchen. Nearly finished with the batter, I misread the recipe and blended in way too much of the final ingredient: espresso. The recipe called for 3/4 cup of hot espresso, plus 1 tablespoon of ground espresso; instead, I hastily measured 3/4 cup of ground espresso. The batter was bitter and too intensely coffee-flavored. Plus, we would have been up all night. Sighing, I threw it out and started again.

The second and final round turned out okay. For whatever reason, the cupcakes were extremely dense, and, I thought, still a little bit too bitter. Instead of icing them with Martha's Swiss Meringue Buttercream, I opted for the simpler Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream, and added two tablespoons (not cups!) of espresso powder to it. The resulting icing was light, sweet, and lick-your-fingers good. Each cupcake was garnished with a coffee bean. I ended up only eating the top half of my cupcake, but my dad ate two of them. Mission accomplished.