See What Happens When a Guy Tries to Make Pretty Cupcakes From Pinterest

I've always thought of cupcakes as just, like ... whatever, man.  They're there, and their presence has zero impact on my journey through life. I've never craved a cupcake, and I'd also never been presented with a cupcake and screamed, wordless and guttural, as I slapped it to the ground and smashed it underfoot — until I had to make them myself.

BAKING TIP: Kitchens are fun!

I don't bake, because if I want to eat junk food, I'd rather shove potato chips into my face hole, and also because fuck baking. I was fairly confident I could stir some cupcake dust and milk and eggs together and spoon it into a tin, and throw it into an oven without completely screwing it up. But that's not what I'm here to do today. I'm here to attempt to recreate the cupcakes of Olympian bakers. That's right: These cupcake recipes came from Pinterest, which I recently learned was a black hole of girly crafting hell. 

Unsurprisingly, my cupcakes came up wanting. In fact, "wanting" is too kind. What I created are confectionary monstrosities, the likes of which everyone around me refused to eat, instead screaming, "How does it smell like this?" That's right, the results were so terrible as to produce odors that were inconcievable. Also, I wore an apron the whole time. Fight me.

1. Flower-Piped Cupcakes

We started off pretty easy on these. I half-assed some cupcakes using a mix. My only small mistake was that I forgot to melt the butter beforehand so I put the whole bowl of batter in the microwave after I had already started mixing it all together. Then I prepared to create an icing sculpture that I was convinced was literally impossible.

BAKING TIP: There's no such thing as too much food coloring!

First off, icing tubes are like toothpaste tubes designed by Satan and then only filled halfway. I hated it immediately. There is also no nozzle that exists to make those kinds of complicated patterns (I should know, I tried at least one of those nozzles and said, "This is probably good enough"). Then I proceeded to make a design in about 30 seconds that effectively looked like a 4 year-old fell asleep while drawing with icing.

It probably takes way more than 30 seconds to make one of those flower cupcakes. Or at least it would, if it were even possible.

2. Heart Cupcakes

You'd think it'd be pretty easy to bake some cake into more cake, but this wound up being basically as hard as an actual heart transplant (I'm assuming ... I've never actually done a heart transplant but maybe that can be my next article). [Ed. note: No, no, it will not.]

BAKING TIP: Just worry about the mess later!

I figured three was better than one, so I cooked a sheet of red cake and then crammed a bunch of cutouts into each cupcake wrapper. Then I poured the batter in, and they formed around the red pieces in such a way that the hearts resembled ham. [Ed. note: Ew. So ew.] Still, this was the best icing job I did all day, and it probably would've tasted good if I didn't crush the whole thing in my hand out of anger that I still had more stupid cupcakes to make.

BAKING TIP: Don't forget the cupcake wrappers!

3. Starbucks Frappuccino Cupcakes

This was hell for me — just the idea that someone even wants to go through the process of making something like this when simply ordering a Frappuccino is bad enough. Now you want to cram a pretentious drink into a pretentious cupcake that takes hours of preparation and literally involves stacking pans on top of each other? If I wasn't getting paid to do this, I'd be out. I get annoyed when I have to use more than a single pan in a recipe, and now I'm combining them to melt some ingredients together? No.

BAKING TIP: There's always a creative solution if you're missing something!

This turned out horrible and I don't even care. I just want to die and go to hell where I'm pretty confident they don't have cupcakes. First, I had to make the mix from scratch. Once again, I forgot to melt the butter first, except this time, when I put the whole bowl in the microwave, I accidentally partially cooked the batter. Now it looked like something you'd see covering the floor of a gas station bathroom on the side of a desolate highway.

BAKING TIP: I don't know anymore.

Next, I started work on the mousse that would top the cupcakes. Here's a pro tip: When a recipe calls for "egg yolks," it means "don't use the egg whites." It probably specifies that because otherwise, when you bring the mixture to a simmer like the next step calls for, the egg whites will cook. This is what happened to me.

BAKING TIP: God is dead.

Next, I folded the mixture into the whipped cream. Except I didn't have whipped cream. I had Reddi-wip, which melted under the heat of my other mixture. It produced a brown soup after the cooked egg whites settled at the bottom. Soup, I'm pretty confident, is several degrees softer than mousse. So I just ran my mixture over the cupcakes like a broth. Then, because I didn't have caramel drizzle, I just put caramel syrup on top. The result was a damp cupcake, black as my heart.

BAKING TIP: You will never accomplish anything and shambling out the door every morning is an exercise in futility.

I will never bake again, as long as I live. Cooking, you can pretty much make up as you go along, but baking is a demanding minx that punishes deviation. It is the algebra of the kitchen, and I hate algebra and I hate kitchens. I give my cupcakes 0/10 stars. I give the original recipes 0/10 stars. I give baking 0/10 stars. I give humanity 0/10 stars. I give the struggle to define purpose and gain an understanding of what makes us human 0/10 stars. I feel nothing now. Seriously, look at this shit.

BAKING TIP: When we die there is nothing, only darkness.

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Cosmo Frank

I am a human male that enjoys consuming meals consisting of all five food groups and fulfilling every level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I write about sex-having.