Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Science!

So this post was originally going to be about some cupcakes I made. But then my husband and I had a raging debate about the cupcakes which ended with me yelling “I AM BLOGGING THIS AND YOU ARE WRONG!”

It started like this. I accidentally bought some lemons. It’s not important how one accidentally buys lemons, just that I did. And I didn’t know what to do with said lemons and I am not a huge fan of lemon except in my tea. So I decided some lemon vegan cupcakes were in order. And I made them. And I decided to use mini soufflé cups instead of cupcake liners because mini soufflé cups can stand on their own and thus there is no cupcake pan to clean and for some reason that just seemed like a good idea. But here’s where the trouble started…well, the trouble after the accidental purchase of lemons…I overfilled the cups. And I kind of knew I had because the recipe claimed to make twelve cupcakes and I only got 11 cups filled and you say, well that happens all the time, inaccurate servings quoted on a recipe, right? But I had made this recipe before and several other from this cook book and they have always worked out. But I foolishly decided to let it go.

Turns out the cake was too delicate to support it’s own weight and instead of making a lovely dome, it just overflowed the cups. Not a problem really. I decided I wouldn’t take any to work and we would just enjoy lemon cupcakes at home for the week. But they were ugly and that made me sad. So I peeled off the soufflé wrappers, whipped up a topping of sour cream (cupcakes=vegan topping=not at all vegan), vanilla and sugar and dotted a few shiny red currants on top and suddenly, they were beautiful! And good. Very good. Dangerously good.

Here’s the point where my husband enters the story. If you come around here from time to time, you may notice that I don’t mention him much. This is because he is banned from reading this blog and thus, I think it would be unfair of me to talk smack about him. But in this one particular case…

I came home last night excited for my St. Patrick’s Day dinner, a baked potato and roasted veggies. And then I remembered it would be even better because it would be followed by a lemony cupcake and mentioned to the husband as much. He pointed to the bag of sad looking little treats and said, “There’s not many left.”

It wasn’t until much later, when I had settled down to tuck into the lovely cake that I said…”Wait, are you telling me you’ve have four and a half cupcakes today?”

“No, “ he said, “I am telling you that I had six and a half cupcakes in the last twenty-four hours.”

Then the real debate started. He insisted that they were “mini-cupcakes” and much smaller than the average size that I make. I conceded hat they might be a little smaller than my average and certainly smaller than the kind you would get at someplace like Sprinkles (but don’t buy cupcakes at Sprinkles, they are nasty! OK, fine, I think they are nasty, if you like them, go for it). The debate raged on for quite a while before I decided to put a stop to it with science.

I marched him into the kitchen and got out one soufflé cup and one cupcake liner, a quarter cup measure and some sugar, then we compared how each cup held the sugar. He got sheepish for a minute but then continued to insist that the soufflé cups held less. I countered by yelling “SCIENCE!” and “DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC? BECAUSE YOU CLEARLY DON’ T BELIEVE IN SCIENCE!” I then proceeded to randomly yell “SCIENCE!” for the rest of the evening.

He stopped arguing for a while but within 20 minutes or so he had pulled out a pad of paper and pen and proceeded to try to defend himself with diagrams. I continued to shout “SCIENCE!” at him and I demanded his diagrams to illustrate this post. He refused and tore them up.

After an in adequate amount of research I think I can safely say that the volume of the paper soufflé cup is 3.25 oz and the cupcake liner is most likely 3.5 ounces. That would make the soufflé cup slightly smaller but by no stretch of the imagination a “mini-cupcake.”

More importantly…SCIENCE!

Also…we’re out of cupcakes again.

7 comments:

Jodi said...

Well, I have cupcakes at my house, but you probably don't want them because 1) They are definitely not vegan and 2)They are most definitely not homemade. I will tell you though that they are delicious.

P.S. This offer is only good for you, not that husband of yours.

Anonymous said...

you're BLINDING me!!!!!!!!!!!

(hahahaha that needed to be said)

i can't sign my name to this, because it is too queer.

PS azalea fest coming up....i'll make you cupcakes!

Anonymous said...

i went around the house tonight yelling "BAGOOMA" for no apparent reason but maybe now i will switch to "SCIENCE"!

Vanessa said...

This is too funny and you are right, .25 less does not a mini cupcake make! Hopefully this will be a huge funny later in life.

Tim said...

In your husband's defense, science is totally made up.

Anonymous said...

I'm making a lot of lemon cupcakes lately too. Must be the season.

Joanne said...

You know you can get aluminum cupcake liners that will stand on their own and not require a cupcake pan. I like the star shaped ones from Reynolds. :) Although they are definitely NOT mini.

I had a recent science debate with our student employee. He swore high heels were good for you to wear even though I had all sorts of evidence to the contrary. He doesn't believe in science either. Maybe it is a boy thing.