A competition?

Earlier this week, my daughters school was having a cupcake bake-off fundraiser, broken down into different categories by grade, and box mix vs. Scratch.  Since it was for a good PTO cause, both my daughter and I decided to enter cupcakes...and if I am going to play, I play to win.

Since I couldn't get to my preferred website for recipes, I had to find a new one, and I settled on this Chocolate Stout Cupcake. The only thing I really did to mix it up was using the Southern Tier Choklat Oranj Stout, instead of something more...mainstream. I thought the orange might add something a little extra to the finished product...and it did. The best part of any cupcake is usually the frosting though, and the vanilla bean cream cheese(actually, Neufchatel Cheese) came out great.

My wife had baked cupcakes with my daughter earlier in the day, but had me to help make the frosting for her cupcakes, and so we just did a simple butter cream frosting for her. She learned the importance of 'pulsing' the mixer when playing with powdered sugar, but not until we had a fine cloud of it spreading around the kitchen.

In the interest of 'victory', looks being as important as taste in competition like this, I finally broke down and ordered a piping bag/decorating kit off of Amazon.  What a game changer.  It is going to take a while to master the technique, but my daughter loved piping frosting on vs. trying to use a spatula.

In the end, I felt kind of bad for my daughter.  She didn't win in her category.   I will admit some of the other cupcakes looked, and tasted a bit better than hers, but to my eye, some kids had a LOT more help their parents. We supervised, and then, I helped fill the piping bag so there wasn't a huge mess...but heck, some of the 4th graders had fondant on theirs!  What 4th grader plays with fondant without major parent help.

I did win the adult category, and got a sweet ribbon to prove it. I'll probably let my daughter put it in her room.