I'm taking a frustration break!

I was finishing up an order for this afternoon and making the batter for my last batch of chocolate cupcakes. As I was sifting the last bit of flour and cocoa together...I do this in 3 steps...I realized I had measured the cocoa with 1/3 cup instead of 1/4! Fortunately (or maybe I should say hopefully!!) it was only this last batch, as the 1/4 cup measure was in the sink and had cocoa on it. Now, I don't have enough cocoa for the last batch so I'll have to run to the store for more. Unfortunately, my car is at the shop for routine checkup and won't be ready for 3 hours.

I was SO ahead of schedule today and now, because I didn't pay attention, I'll be rushing the rest of the day to finish on time.

I hate doing things like that. I added too much oil to a cake once using the wrong measuring cup. I had to redo it of course because it was for a carved cake.

I think we can all relate to this! You have my sympathy!

Ack! I'm feeling you on both the car problem and the batter goof. Last night I forgot to put vanilla in a recipe and my daughter is 2 hours away at college with a broken transmission. Hubby's spent the last 2 weekends getting his car up to snuff and now we have to borrow a vehicle for him, get his down to her (as she has a 6 hour trip to take this week), and somehow fit this all into our own work and school schedules. Oh yeah, and figure out what to do about her transmission and find time and money to do it.

It's gonna be a doozy of week, isn't it?

Ladies.... when it rains............................... IT POURS!!!!

I know the feeling and I know how much we get affected by it... somehow we feel like we are to blame.... instead of just being a little more "nice to ourselves and just realizing that we WILL err here and there and thing WILL happen at times.... but I think it's in our nature to feel like we MUST have everything under control.... and when we don't... we are hard on "we"....

I hope you can get back on schedule pronto....

I know!! Once my neighbor came over when I was mixing a scratch cake, and I completely left out the sugar!! Needless to say when it baked up, it didn't rise (I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I had so much less batter!) and when it was done I tasted it -- can you say cake play dough?? It was awful!! Yep, you are not alone!

ugh.. my worst is making a cake for a dear co-worker's baby shower, I had made a chunky strawberry filling (strawberries, sugar, constarch- cook down) a few weeks prior & was going to use it for this cake. I (wrongly) assumed it was like jelly in the fridge & would totally last but when I got it out it was moldy! I had to run to the store in the pouring rain for more strawberries, cook it up & try to cool it down fast. I ended up filling the cake when it was still warmish as I didn't want to run out of time, and it totally oozed through the icing! Nearly a cake disaster.
It's the giraffe brown & blue 3 tier cake in my photos. If you look closely you can see a streak of strawberry in the frosting on the plaid tier.

Oh, I'm always fixing my goof ups...but I'm glad to know I'm in good company! Today wouldn't have been so bad if I had just messed up the measuring. But I did that, AND I didn't have enough cocoa to re-make AND I didn't have a car to go out and buy more AND....

So...I re-thought my day and worked on a few other orders while waiting on my car to be finished. I finally picked up the car, flew to the grocery store, bought supplies, got back to kitchen. Flour ready. Cocoa ready. 1/4 cup measure in hand...checked 3 times to make sure it's the right one this time! Measure, mix, pour. Cupcakes baked, filled, decorated, photographed (I usually forget that step), boxed and delivered on time....and payment received. Customer emailed me this evening to say everything was beautiful and delicious. All's well that ends well.

Okay, we all see things like this happen on even the TV shows. I know that a lot of what we see is staged, but it does sometimes help customers see that things go wrong for the best of us.

Just take a deep breath!

Yay for Johnnycakes! I'm glad you made it through okay!
Isn't it amazing how "No, I won't need the car. I'm not going anywhere" quickly turns into, "Shoot! I have to go somewhere and I have no way to get there?"

I've made many stupid mistakes also. I just try to slow myself down when I start screwing up because if I make one, I usually make another and another, well you get the point.

You mean I'm not the only one ditsy enough to leave things (specifically vanilla) out of cake mixes??? I did that 2 weeks ago on a doll cake. Realized it in one of those forehead-slapping moments right when I was taking the cakes out of the oven. I could have screamed! And yeah, I was doing so well on time before that. After that, not so.