cupcake fail..

The other night I finally attempted to use one of my Christmas presents from the Man's folks, a giant cupcake pan.  It's become a "thing" for me to make cupcakes for the guys at the Man's shop, the girls at my office, or just for fun.  I love cupcakes-- they're fun and cute and festive.  How could they be better?  I've made mini-cakes-- my next quest was giant cupcakes.  The Man's folks picked up on this and ordered me a giant silicone cupcake pan like this one from Collections Etc.

It all started off pretty well.  The thing I love about silicone bakeware is how easy it is to remove cakes from the forms. I made a strawberry cake (which was probably my first mistake-- it's a bit moist and doesn't really take well to shaping).  But I still saw potential and visions of cute giant cupcakes danced through my head.

When I started to assemble everything, things slowly started to go wrong:

The base of the cupcake, already swelling out from it's initial shape

When I put the top of the cupcake on, it began to look more like a ball.  Within a minute, the sides of the base cracked open and frosting came pouring out like hot magma.  I knew we had to regroup.  Thankfully the Man was helping me out and was on the ready.  We attempted to revive the cake but it didn't help.

So instead, I made a spoon cake.  I remember my grandmother doing that before when her cakes fell and frosting spackle couldn't repair the damaged layers.  She would just crumble the cake into a casserole dish and spread the frosting on top.  At about 11:00 at night, I thought it was worth a try. 

We still have kitchen stuff scattered all through the house, and after a scavenger hunt for my giant cupcake pan earlier in the evening (it was in the guest bedroom closet), I knew the Man and I weren't feeling up to tearing the house apart again.

I like to keep our "snacky" foods in glass jars and the smallest one seemed like a perfect fit.

I layered in the crumbled strawberry cake and cream cheese frosting and a few fun sprinkles.

I wanted to make it a little more festive, so I added some of my favorite faux raffia and a tag or two.

I'm pretty happy with the results. 

I really like the idea, it travels so much better and is a lot easier to carry. 

True, I failed in making my first giant cupcake.  However, I did create my first jarcake.

Cupcake fail....Jarcake WIN!