ninety degrees outside?!?!

...and it's November!!! I can't believe how warm it's been this month. I was so excited when, in October, somebody turned off the heat outside! Apparently, it was just a glitch.

But aside from that. Cupcakes.

We've been making all kinds of cupcakes! So fun.

Last time, I told you that we were making Blackberry cabernet cupcakes. We did. It was okay... I'm pretty sure the problem was some combination of not enough cocoa and the red wine... I'm pretty sure that the purpose of the cocoa in these cupcakes was to cover up the oxidation of the wine. I learned this when the wine was added to cupcake batter containing too little cocoa and it turned grey. It looked so much like clay that E and I talked about using it for facials... delicious, cupcakey facials...

But we didn't, we baked it and it was still grey. It was not appetizing looking, and it didn't taste like much. Oddly enough, a couple days later, they turned a nice chocolate brown... weird.

The color could be covered up by the frosting. We made a reduction of cabernet sauvignon with blackberries in it. Then we mixed it with butter and sugar to make a buttercream frosting. Even though the alcohol had been boiled away, the wine lent a tangy flavour to the frosting that was really unexpected and made the frosting pop! And the color.... it was a gorgeous magenta! But, alas, even awesome frosting can't save all cupcakes... I ended up baking another batch of cupcakes (this time a chocolate sour cream recipe) and brushed them with cabernet after they were baked-- liberally applied, of course!! Topped with the tangy, sweet, fruity, boozey frosting, deliciousness ensued.