When baking goes wrong

So often on blogs I see beautiful pictures of beautiful things - sunsets, children, crafty output, baking - the list is endless.

I am here to buck this trend.

Let me tell you a little story that may make you feel better and realise that everyone in the blogosphere is not a perfect human being, living in a Cath Kidston quilted world with bluebirds putting up my perfectly coiffed hair whilst I embroider with silk.

I decided for one of my Not Really Resolutions this year that I would bake once a month because I miss baking. (It's once a month because my hips do not need me to bake more frequently) In February I decided I would try something a little different and attempt to make some Cookie Monster fairy cakes that I've seen hanging about on the interwebs for some time now.

Everything went very smoothly at first which gave me a false sense of security. The Person's oven has a mind of its own and baking in it should only be taken on at your own risk but, by some miracle, I had 12 happy little fairy cakes all ready to be decorated with blue icing, cookies and marshmallows.

Easy.

"Turn icing blue" should be a simple enough task but I, in a feat which only I could be capable of, managed to cock it up. All I wanted was for my icing to turn a nice bright blue colour and logic told me that I should add more food colouring until it happened. But at some point, when my icing was refusing to turn any brighter than a powder blue no matter how many extra drops I added, this logic was replaced by a crazed obsession which flew in the face of reality and before I knew it, I'd used a whole bottle of food colouring without effecting any change in the colour of the icing.

So I think we can basically call this a fail. The Cookie Monster is supposed to be bright frigging blue, but instead mine were going to look like the Cookie Monster had gone 10 rounds with a bottle of bleach.

There can be no disappointment greater than that of someone whose baking has gone wrong. All that stupid time and effort (not to mention money) and nothing very impressive to show for it. It's gutting.

But I had started and I was bloody well going to finish.

I tried to do fancy piping to make it look like fur but guess what? I can't do that either so I just slapped the icing on any old way and decided that would do. I soldiered on with my decorating until I hit the next stumbling block which came in the form of a lack of white marshmallows (I could only find bags of pink and white ones!) meaning that half my Cookie Monsters looked like they were battling a case of pink eye.

So let us recap my baking adventure:
1. Icing didn't turn blue
2. Fancy piping to look like fur didn't work
3. Ran out of white marshmallows

Don't be jealous of my life bloggers.

And so I challenge you to put up pictures of your shit baking, your crap crochet and your blurry sunsets. For we shall represent what is real and make others feel better about themselves.

Artistic representation of the colour that I wanted my icing to go

---------------------------------

PS I took to Twitter to lament my icing woes and the consensus is that gel colouring/paste is the way forward if I want bright colours. Noted although I don't know I have the internal strength needed to face doing this again.