Cupcake Disaster

Lest you think I am a veritable Martha Stewart (said in jest because we all know the reason I'm not married is because I can't bake bread, wink wink!), let me present to you my latest disaster.

Because this year church doesn't start until 3:00, leaving me nearly a full day of appropriate Sabbath day activity, and because Marni and I planned a delightful Sunday dinner with Russ, Greg, Jon, and Sue after church and I was in charge of dessert, and because I've been craving summer food, I attempted the innocent-sounding tangerine cupcakes.

Looks like we really are still on for six weeks of winter, folks. I'm so sorry for my contribution to that.

I swear the only ways I swerved from the printed recipe were these:

• I used regular flour instead of cake flour (come on... does it REALLY make a difference?)
• My buttermilk had been frozen and had thawed
• I used real orange juice instead of orange juice concentrate

Does any of that merit the mess you see before you? Seriously, people. There was nothing cake about it. The dough seemed fine, it even bubbled over its allotted 2/3 filling, leaving a nice golden brown ring around the edges of each cup. But then it magically shrunk down to 1/4 of a measly inch, leaving this awful gooey lemon bar-filling-type of nastiness... nothing like the vanilla cake with tangerine peel I had envisioned. I don't get it.

At least my butter pecan ice cream turned out beautifully.