Camp Cupcake: Fruitcake

I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I am a week away from moving out of Lubbock, six days from graduation, five days from my family coming to visit, and two days from quitting work. I've been a little bit busy.

I have now completed all of the recipes I committed to make in Martha Stewart's Cupcake Cookbook. They are done. It will probably be a little while before I blog about all of them.

However, yesterday was July 31, and I promised that I would be done with all of these recipes by then.

On Wednesday, I made the fruitcakes and attempted the meringue mushrooms on Thursday.

Let me go on record right now as saying that this is one of Martha's more bizarre ideas.

I can wrap my head around fruitcake. When my parents were first married, my mom made fruitcake at Christmas. My dad, after tasting my mom's, decided to try to improve upon it. Since then, it has been a weird obsession with him to make fruitcake every year, usually just after Thanksgiving, and to try to improve upon it every year (Yes, I am aware that I have probably inherited this from him).

I realize that not everyone likes fruitcake. In fact, it is sort of a joke at Christmas time. It is dense, with a very small cake-to-fruit ratio. In addition, the fruit is typically candied, and like marzipan, is a substance unto itself. At the same time, I have fond memories of fruitcake at Christmas. I discovered that I am not the only one. I brought these to the temple yesterday and had a 15-minute conversation with one of the other temple workers about the fruitcake her husband's mother made for many years. My dad has several people he makes his for every year, and for them, it is a holiday highlight (or so they say).

The meringue mushrooms made a lot less sense to me. When I described them to people, I realized that I was not alone. I still, for the life of me, cannot understand why Martha thought that needed to happen. Apparently, fruitcake is not impressive enough by itself.

So I made the recipe, which I have included here. The only difference between the recipe linked and the one I made is that I used half the fruit and nuts, which gave it a better cake-to-fruit ratio.

I did not make the Seven-Minute Frosting because there is little difference between it and the meringue I had to make for the mushrooms, so before I baked the meringue, I used it to frost the cupcakes.

Here is a picture of my cookbook:

You probably can't see the smears of chocolate, or the pages hanging loose. I intend to have it spiral-bound when I settle down in Utah.

I really wanted to wrap this up neatly, like Julie and Julia, with the life lessons I have learned, and a pilgrimage to Martha Stewart's home in New York to sneak a can of Dutch-processed cocoa onto her porch before her security guards find me. However, in the midst of all of this baking and blogging, my life happened in a wonderful and exhausting way that, unlike Julie Powell's life, has nothing to do with baking or blogging.

So, that's the lesson I would leave for the three people who are curious if I ever finished this project or not: life does not always have to fit together neatly. Sometimes, you can do something like bake cupcakes or start a blog, and it can be a wonderful release without having to give birth to a book deal or a new restaurant, or a calling or a relationship. Sometimes, baking can just be about baking.

Sometimes a cupcake is just a cupcake.

And, while I have not yet selected a new project to continue my involvement in this blog, rest assured that there will be another one. As silly as the cupcake project was, there is something about setting a goal and completing it that I am addicted to.

For now, though, this is Camp Cupcake, aka Keiko Agena, signing off.