Chili Supper

Every year, the band has a chili supper. It's a major fund raiser for the music boosters, and the kids enjoy the casual atmosphere of the concert they perform. The 6th, 7th, and 8th grade bands perform in the cafeteria while the attendees eat dinner, then we all go outside to the football field to watch the high school band perform their field show. This year's chili supper is tomorrow night.

This year, I decided to provide 2 dozen cupcakes for the dessert table. It's been a pretty busy weekend, so I got started on the cupcakes a little late in the afternoon. After a close inspection of my refrigerator and cupboards, I discovered that I had some extra ganache and chocolate fudge icing that I made last week, and some orange candy melts. So I went to the store and bought a Pilsbury dark chocolate cake mix. Even though it was the kind with pudding in the mix, I was feeling a little guilty about just using a box mix. So ... while I was mixing it up, I noticed that there was still some coffee in the coffee maker. So I added coffee to the mix instead of water. I like the way that coffee enhances the chocolate flavor.

I was able to get 27 cupcakes out of the mix ... which is good considering I only needed 24.

While the cakes were cooling, I got to work melting the orange candy melts and filling my music candy molds. Why orange? Well ... orange is a nice fall color AND the high school's colors are orange and black. Perfect!

The mold I have has notes, flats, sharps, treble clefs, and bass clefs. Can you believe they made the flats backwards?!? Therefore, I never make the flats or the sharps. Sharps without flats would just be stupid after all.

After a lovely dinner made by my lovely husband, I got to work decorating the cupcakes. Still feeling a little guilty about the box mix, I filled each of the cupcakes with the dark chocolate ganache. I had just enough. I have decided that I really like filled cupcakes. Eating a cupcake that is filled with something is just a nice little surprise with every bite.

I then got to work on the chocolate fudge icing. My son likes to eat it straight from the bowl, but I kept telling him that he couldn't have it this past week. I was still a little worried that I wouldn't have enough ... and I really wasn't in the mood to make more icing. I filled my decorating bag and began to swirl. Knowing that I was low on icing, I tried to make it a small basic swirl, but I sometimes get carried away.

I swirled and topped with a candy note over and over and over again. Unfortunately, I ran out of chocolate fudge icing with 2 cupcakes left. Bummer. Since I had my 24 cupcakes already, I just scraped the bowl with a knife and iced the last 2 cupcakes with it. I figured I could feed those to my boys ... they won't complain too much ... right? It turns out that there was a little bit of complaining. Oh well ... they got a cupcake.

They are now all packaged up and ready to go to the chili supper. The question is ... do I take one with my dinner? ... or do I leave them for other people? I'll probably try to get one with my dinner.