Cauldron Cake Fail

Cauldron Cake Fail

Tonight my friends and I are having a nerd night to celebrate our love of vlogbrothers, Harry Potter, reading, and all other things nerdy (although I do have to admit that none of us are video game nerds). We're planning on peeps, hachen schlachen, butterbeer (rootbeer with a new label, 'cause I'm crafty like that... okay, fine, I got a label off of google), and cauldron cakes.

I pulled a recipe off of the Leaky Cauldron, because my crafty skills don't usually extend to edible items. I followed the recipe, which basically said don't use those little cupcake papers, and stick a marshmallow in the middle of each one so that it deflates and forms a dip in the cupcake.

I tend to have bad luck with baking - I overcook cookies, or I undercook brownies, and I always burn poptarts - so it should have been no suprise when, upon taking the cauldron cakes out of the oven, I instead found burnt marshmallow.
EVERYWHERE.

The marshmallows did indeed melt and form caverns in the cupcakes, but they also slopped to the side and ran off the pan and then got hard and very sticky, as I discovered when I attempted to push them back into the centers of the cupcakes.

The next problem stemmed from the instruction to not use cupcake papers. Don't scold me - I sprayed the pan, I really did, but they decided to stick anyway. My mom dug them out with a knife, which worked, mostly, but they weren't exactly pretty.

So to attempt to hide the ugliness I took some frosting and added green food coloring and sqeezed it on top of each one with a ziploc with the tip cut off. (That was another kind of mess completely.) Not exactly perfect considering I couldn't find the kind of licorice that you're supposed to make the little cauldron handles with.

Hopefully they taste okay.
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