Drunken and Sunken

My world right now is sludgy and slick. Stepping outdoors requires a certain application of layers and once outside, walking down my outdoor steps is treacherous work (I fell two weeks ago and still have a bruise). But Tuesday I was gifted with a snow day. I woke up to check the school Web site and then slid back under the sheets, barely crawling out sometime around 10 to do some work. By noon I was ready to experiment in the kitchen. As you can see from the above photo, that experimentation did not go well the first round.

My sister gave me a cookbook from the Humingbird Bakery in London, which interestingly enough sells American baked goods specifically cupcakes. I forget about all the great sweets Americans bring to the global table: brownies, cookies, pies, a sweet and moist cake and cupcakes. My problem is that I often come to things like brownies, cookies and cakes and think they're too boring or too sweet, which they often are, so I want to mess with them. So I do things like replace the milk with whiskey, which frankly should be a lifelong rule of thumb, and add instant coffee. Using my now somewhat scientific knowledge of the baking process, I figured the moisture with the milk and with the whisky would equal out, what doesn't even out is the fat content--there being none in whiskey. So batch one of the drunken mocha cupcakes was a flop, literally.

I think the friends I rounded up to watch movies on the snow day would have been happy with the drunken-sunken cupcakes, but pulling what little bit of a perfectionist I have lying around deep down inside, I made another batch, which didn't turn out perfect (the recipe was listed in weight and I lost my scale, so measuring was a touch inaccurate) but it was acceptable. Someday I'll find a good American chocolate cupcake recipe, and when I do, I'll share it with you.