cutest cupcakes ever

allie and i settled in for a long weekend of more baking fun. this time we did some research online for a good chocolate cupcake recipe and found one on recipezaar.com, one of my favorite places ever! i found the perfect one, it had several rave reviews and was even featured on an episode of grey's anatomy - my other favorite thing! although the recipe called for more steps like melting your own chocolate, i decided it was worth the effort. friday cooking started with this cute apron allie sewed with grandma that afternoon. it seems like we're always short an apron around here so allie sewed an extra one for friends to wear when they come over, she modeled it tonight just for fun. as a side note, allie went to madeline and amelia's bithday part - twins in our ward who we LOVE and eileen had this fabulous idea to sew them each their own apron. so her and allie sewed THREE aprons friday afternoon. we wrapped up two of them with the betty crocker junior cook book which we love. ok, back on subject. so we melted he chocolate and added the cream (notice my make-shift double boiler - i can't find one anywhere!) and all of the rest of the several steps while taking great pains to follow the recipe just right. i've been dying for mini cupcakes lately this recipe made such a huge batch of batter that we ended up with about 150 of them! a ton of work but they looked sooooo good. the next morning we started the frosting, again, researched on recipezaar.com. once the frosting was made i realized it was not quite the right consistency for decorating and found a recipe for a yummy buttercream instead. well, i'm an idiot because after adding ten cups of sugar (it was a big batch), i realized that it wasn't getting smooth and then it dawned on me that i was supposed to use POWDERED sugar - DUH! so on our third attempt, we made this delightful buttercream frosting and began the decorating process. we used fun spring sprinkles, coconut and even rolled out some fondant for some spring daisies. we worked until we giggled because these were by far the cutest cupcakes ever! we put together a plate to go phil and lauri's and just as i was feeling that sense of pride and accomplishment that comes with a baking project of this calibur and cuteness, something terrible happened. i unwrapped one of the cupcakes, coconut - my favorite, and took a big bite. then i started to gag, choke and cough. it was terrible! what? it was terrible! it tasted like there was no sugar in the recipe, only bitter baking chocolate. you may think i left something out of the recipe right? wrong! i double checked every ingredient and even added a little bit of sugar! at this point, i was almost near tears, seriously, 150 mini cupcakes all frosted and ready for decorating and delivering that tasted terrible. what in the world could i do? and so, i got out a target bag, wrapped them up and delivered them all to the garbage can out front. and chocolate cupcakes are here by banned from our house for at least a month. grrr! of course, this did not stop ethan from eating the frosting on top, the frosting, was great, on the third try.

**have you ever had a baking disaster?

do you know where i can get a good but not ridiculously expensive double boiler?

do you have a fabulous chocolate cupcake recipe you would like to share?**