Baking a good cupcake is no joke.
Kiddo and I cooked up 22 of the single-serve cakes for our school’s election day bake sale. And then we watched a few episodes of Nailed It!, because, unironically, we did nail it. (It took me at least six hours of nonstop work to do basic cupcakes from scratch with Betty Crocker frosting, so I feel for all the contestants who had to make a fondant chocolate alien autopsy of corpuscular jalapeno corncake and neon lime curd guts in a little over an hour. Bravo to all of you.)
As I whipped the eggs and sugar, I wondered when I was supposed to heat the butter and milk and where to keep the sifted flour, baking powder and salt. And I stared at the ingredients list, because it 100 percent said vanilla extract and Canola oil. But nowhere in this online recipe did it say when to add them. Liquid? After I temper the hot butter and milk?
So I dumped the vanilla in the eggs and sugar and it smelled awesome, with the blender at top speed and thought this clearly was what to do. And I dropped in one teaspoon of Canola oil and froze. “Sh*t, that oil’s probably going to screw with the binding of the eggs and sugar. No way this thing triples in volume in seven minutes.”
I pondered dumping the whole thing and starting over, but I still had six minutes blending to do and thought, “The hell with it, let’s ride.”
It doubled in volume. Good enough.
I gently folded and incorporated the dry mixture. (Blend 15 seconds, lowest speed. Scrape the sides. Blend another 10 seconds.) I pulled the hot milk and butter from the microwave. It absolutely boiled and separated and now there was some kind of skim on top of it, but whatever.
I tempered the hot milk and butter with my 2/3 proper batter, then poured it in *slowly* as directed. I blended it (blent?) it all up and that thing was bubbling right, aerated batter enough to sell at any high-end cupcake shop (if they still exist.) I poured the batter into the cupcake holders and popped them in the oven for 22 minutes at 350F.
Then I searched that website again for “vanilla” and “Canola oil”. Gd, never said where or when to add it. Now what am I supposed to do with that? Hmmm??
I made lunch, sat down with my hard copy of Samin Nosrat’s “Good Things” cookbook, grumbled “Man, f*ck the internet” and cooled off with a few analog pages of cooking vegetables.
The single-serve cakes themselves came out great, I thought.
And then staring at eight sticks of softened butter and yawning, I figured it was time to throw in the towel. Pre-made icing, yo.
As we watched Nailed It!, I wracked my brain trying to figure out how to transport all these. How am I supposed to carry 22 frosted cupcakes on short notice? It’s late on a Sunday, and they need to be in by Monday morning. Not much left open. Can’t chance an Amazon overnight.
And damn if the internet didn’t come through. I asked Google AI, and it said inverted cup strategy. Flip a clear plastic cup and position the frosted cupcake on the lid, glue it down with a dab of frosting.
“Ok, internet, you’re alright,” I thought.
And with that we had 22 small cakes, packaged and ready for sale, in flipped plastic cups.
Cup. Cakes.
***
So what does any of that have to do with Election Day?
Well, we vote based on information. And our current environment is a haze of constant information, some of it correct, much of it completely fabricated. Some of it is clear, some of it poisonous.
Ping-ponging from my phone to my laptop to a few printouts for a simple scratch cupcake recipe had me wishing I just had one of those old red, hardcopy, Good Housekeeping cookbooks laying around. And it reminded me jarringly of covering politics nonstop in this decade of chaos.
I don’t have any predictions, or aggregations of predictions or even a pop-up market where you can pay me a marginal fee to cast your own predictions. I ain’t doing the prognosticating thing because we are now at the only poll that matters and will have answers soon.
But I do have some information tips: keep it to trusted sources. Professionalism matters. The author of the missing vanilla extract recipe needed an editor. There are plenty of places to choose from, including here. But whenever other parents ask me where to go, I point to the basics: AP, Reuters, New York Times, Wall Street Journal.
Limited time, limited bandwidth, keep it to something vetted and professional.
***
Misc.
The “Jesus, Sex and Politics” investigation continues into Life Church, Nathan Peternel and Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith. I haven’t had any public updates recently, but stay tuned.
I’ve recently picked up more work with a small business news startup, Quincy News. I’ve covered politics 25 years and business for half a year. So if you know business news, bonds, Treasury and related, drop a line. I’ll take all the help I can get.
I’ll have some news coverage updates for 24sight after the election. And be on the lookout for some design updates here at 24sight News, which turns 3(!!) in January.
And my Patriotic Middle Finger (the backstory on that July 4th adventure here) is healed up nicely with a slight memorial divot.
I need your support. I am the only journalist who has stayed on the “Jesus, Sex and Politics” investigation since it started more than a year ago.
I’m committed to this, but real reporting takes a lot of time and effort. Please contribute at PayPal or Venmo or via my GoFundMe page or with a paid subscription here on Substack.
My deepest thanks to all who have helped so far.
Tom LoBianco is the editor of 24sight News. He is an award-winning journalist and author who has covered the White House, Congress, multiple presidential campaigns and more for CNN, The Associated Press and other outlets. He has spent more than a year investigating a sex scandal inside the church of Indiana’s Christian nationalist lieutenant governor, you can get the full coverage here. Email him at tom@24sight.news.
Extremely ambitious baking. Whatever will he do next?