Fourth of July Fail

I love the Fourth of July. When I lived in Georgia, my family and I would go with my aunt, uncle and cousins (sometimes nearly the whole family) to Panama City Beach, FL for many years in a row. While PCB is beautiful, I was never sure what the initial attraction was for my family: they didn't drink or party, and weren't big on huge crowds, yet we went to the Redneck Riviera during it's busiest time of year (yes, even busier than Spring Break) and stayed right in the center of the Strip. Regardless, we still had a wonderful time each year and made great memories.

My favorite over the years!

PCB 2007

My family still tries to go to the beach for Independence Day each year, but I don't get to join them. I still always try to keep my spirits up when I'm so far away from my family on this particular holiday. This year I wanted to make a patriotic dessert for Jason's work cookout. I pulled from several pins, making this a very long entry. Sorry 'bout it!

Red, White and Blue seemed to easy to make edible. I started with converting my Devil's Food Cake into Red Velvet, which is suppose to be easy. You just add red food coloring and extra cocoa. Well I didn't have enough food coloring, but I DID have extra red icing.

+ = 

It didn't work. So I added all the red food coloring I had to cake mix. It wasn't pretty, but still tasted good. I poured it into a bag. 

    

Then I moved onto my blue...which was turning yellow mix. It turned out more teal than blue, even after all the food coloring was added. No need to waste though! I also poured this into a bag.

My idea for these originated from this: Marbled Red Velvet Cupcakes. Since I didn't have awesome baking gear, that's what the bags were for. 

I put my liners into my mini cupcake pan and prepared to combine. 

 Since I am rather unskilled, I decided to make layers instead of side-by-side color. So far, so good.

If I haven't told you before, I have a mini cupcake maker. I love it. I suggest you get one. It is a pain because you can only make 7 at a time, but I never have an issue with burning or uneven baking. Plus it's great for hot days because it doesn't warm up the entire kitchen. It kicks itself on and off, so all you do is put the filled liners in and wait eight minutes. 

I was pre-occupied with the mixing of colors, and didn't properly measure how much went into each liner. It doesn't affect how well it is cooked in my maker, but it does make the cupcakes appear more like mushrooms. Oops. 

I tried to alter the amount I filled later, but most of them were already filled by this time. Patriotic shrooms are in, right? 

Another downfall to my measuring: I ended up making over 100. After mixing more than 50, I started making some just red and just blue...and ran out of the white liners I had. So I layered the rest and made a small bundt cake. So much for not using the oven. 

My next venture was Firecracker Icing. Apparently, Southeastern CT-ers don't care much for them, so 1 grocery store, 3 gas stations and 2 specialty stores later I finally found strawberry and tropical punch (which looks more green instead instead of blue) Pop Rocks. I wasn't about to let them go to waste! However, it was so humid I didn't want to use up the 'pop' so I made the Funfetti icing and sprinkled the Pop Rocks on right before we left. It was still too humid, so the 'pop' ran out before we even got to the cookout. I was so disappointed, I didn't take another picture. 

<here's where it would have gone>

And now I know how to make teal and brownish mushrooms for a fairy themed party. I've still got some Pop Rocks left over, which are always fun. My cupcakes were eaten, so the flavors weren't destroyed. Overall though, it was a fail. I'll do it better next year (hopefully at our brand-new command)!

This is how my Fourth ended, with my new(er) family snuggling on the couch and Murphy trying to be brave through the fireworks...perhaps our new tradition??? We shall see.