Doh! Nice Recovery

My second order, another 1st birthday: 1-1/2 dozen chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and 1-1/2 dozen lemon cupcakes with vanilla frosting, blueberry and strawberry sauce, topped with strawberries and blueberries. The fact that the latter has such a long name is a clue of how difficult it was. I thought it was so well planned. I made all the components in advance - cupcakes, frostings, sauces.
Assembling the chocolate cupcakes was almost too easy. I finished them after Alec gave Laura a bath and read her bedtime stories - about an hour.

The lemon cupcakes took almost 4 hours, working from 9pm - 1am. One of the slow downs was the sauces. I had frozen them, then thawed them. It seemed the water separated from the sauces and it was all lumpy. So I reheated them in a sauce pan until it was homogenous. And like last time, little chunks of berry got stuck in the squeeze bottle spout, which slowed my work down.

The most unbelievable part was just as I am about to add the final sauce swirl to the frosted lemon cupcakes, I take the box of cupcakes out of the frigerator and set it on the counter and turn back to the frigerator to soften the slam of the frig door, as not to wake up Laura. Only I didn't set the entire box on the counter and the box topples to the floor. I can't believe what just happened.

Surprisingly when I opened the box, none of the cupcakes looked very damaged, only that the strawberries had fallen off and a couple blueberries got smushed. I had extra berries, so I could easily replace them. Ok, not a catastrophe. I resume saucing but am a little unnerved at the accident and tired because it's way past my bedtime. I drizzle a swirly pattern of sauce on the cupcakes and they don't turn out exactly as I had envisioned. Since I used a round tip to make a smooth soft-serve-ice cream-like swirl for frosting, the sauce does not have enough grooves to cling to the frosting, so some sauce dribbles messily down. I am not happy but am too tired to care. And as usual I ask myself "why am I doing this?"
I go to bed unsatisfied and disappointed in my work. Of course, I can't fall asleep because I'm thinking about how horrified my client will be when they see the cupcakes.

The next morning I wake up to Laura whimpering, look at the clock - 6:30am. I didn't get much sleep but enough to realize that I can't present those lemon cupcakes as is. The customer is supposed to come to pick up the order at 9am, I consider a total redo of the frosting. Can I do it in less than 2 hours? Yes, I can do it! I get up, quickly feed Laura and myself. It's 7:30am by the time I start new frosting, which I whip up in 15 minutes. I inspect the sauces to ensure they are of good consistency and there is enough to do 1 1/2 dozen cupcakes. All components are done for a decorating redo. I carefully detach the frosting from the lemon cupcakes and fortunately, they practically come off in one piece and somewhat cleanly. This time I use a star tip and make zig zags across the cupcake - proper groovage. Then I drizzle the sauces along the same zig zag path. Another small rose of frosting in the center. Top with two slices of strawberries and a blueberry. It looks good, yes! And no sign that they were ever messed up. I finish redecorating the cupcakes by 8:37am and have time to spare for clean up.

Lesson learned: be more careful transfering the product. The silver lining was that the second rendition of the lemon cupcakes was better. I'll have to accept that I'll make mistakes. I suppose the mistakes are not always a reflection of my ability - the challenge is figuring out how to recover from them.