Cupcakes : Dessert or Disaster?

So I bought this rosewater stuff in the baking aisle just because I've never heard of it and it seemed intriguing.  I tried to find recipes to use it in but this ingredient was pretty obscure.  I finally found the prettiest little rosewater cupcakes with whitechocolate meringue butttercream and thought this could be promising.  However, I am not the type of person who just whips up cupcakes.  I need an excuse for baking these type of things.  So when Nick asked me to make his assistant something for her birthday I was excited to have a reason to put my baking hat on and give these a go.

Now, another fun fact is that Nick's mum is currently staying with us.  We get along, but at times I feel as if we are passive aggressively fighting to win the title of "ultimate woman" in Nick's life.  So when Nick asked me to bake him cupcakes this triggered an impromptu bake-off between yours truly and the mum.

I was rummaging through cabinets trying to find food coloring, when I came across packets for something called blamanche.  The mum was hovering around me waiting for the opportunity to be of assistance to her son so when I asked her what blamanche was she got very excited and said she would make it for Nick for dessert tonight.

So there we were dancing around each other in our less than huge kitchen, each baking our respective desserts.  Her singing and humming, and me trying to focus on the cupcakes at hand.  I whipped up batter and got the cupcakes in the oven meanwhile she was heating milk and sugar on the stove.  She then added some little packet of stuff to it which turned the milk pepto-bismal pink.  This went in a jello-mold and was placed in a fridge.

I had started my frosting which required egg whites and a cup of sugar to be whisked together over medium heat until the sugar dissolved.  Then I beat them until they were at room temperature.  I then added 18 tablespoons of butter in chunks to form the frosting.  I beat these for ages and it looked like a soggy buttery mess.  The recipe said this might happen but not to worry and just keep beating.  So I took a seat on the kitchen floor and kept on beating to no avail.  It was still soggy and not coming together at all.  I was about to admit defeat award the title of ultimate woman to the mum but as I was sitting there I realized there was still a box of icing sugar in the pantry.  I grabbed it and sat down on the floor with renewed vigor and sifted in powdered sugar in batches until finally half a box of sugar later my frosting looked like frosting.  One point for the wife!  The recipe then calls for about 1/4 of a cup of white chocolate - but considering the amount of sugar I added I threw in the whole bar. After all the doctering up the icing was delish if I do say so myself.  And I had so much icing I made another batch of cupcakes.

So I iced the cupcakes and put some sprinkles on them and put them in the fridge.

After dinner the mum and I served up our desserts.  Her blamanche was quite possibly the most cringe inducing dessert I have ever had.  It was artificial strawberry flavor, not my favorite at the best of times, but it was the texture that really threw me.  Think of milk in jello formation - but with chunks every now and then from where the milk had burned when she was heating it up.  I could barely keep from dry heaving.  I tried to politely excuse myself because I'd consumed so much sugar taste-testing my frosting and I gave mine to Nick who ate 3/4 of the entire pie sized dessert.

My cupcakes on the other hand were rich and sweet.  The frosting was great, though the cake was a little eggy.

When we were alone later that night I had to ask the only non-biased taster who was winner of this unofficial bake-off.  I asked him which dessert he preferred and he gave a non-commital "its apples compared to oranges" type answer.  Can you say BS???  Then I asked him if we were making dessert tomorrow which would he want.  He said none because his stomach was killing him from the amount of blamanche he'd consumed.  Again BS response.  Then I asked him if I was making him dessert next week should I make cupcakes or blamanche.  His response...... "blamanche".

I lost to a pepto-bismal milk jello mold dessert.  The mum wins.  FML.