If it's not one thing...

Today is my sisters birthday. 
 I had found a great idea on Pinterest - "Hot Chocolate Truffles".  I thought this would be the perfect present (self confessed chocaholic here!) along with some big mugs to make said Hot Chocolate.
Well.  Where do I begin?  The first part was easy - melting the chocolate and cream together and leaving to cool in fridge.  The second part, also easy.  Place blobs of mix on wax paper then place back in fridge.  Now the next part - roll mix into balls and wrap in clingfilm - sounds like it should be super simple, but alas, this was not the case!  Firstly, mix did not want to come off the paper (I used greaseproof paper which I assumed would work) so I ended up scraping it off and blobbing it onto clingfilm, leaving a lot of chocolate behind, and covering myself in it also (not such a bad thing).  I decided that perhaps the freezer would be the best place to leave these to turn into "truffles" as they were meant to be.
This morning I went to the freezer to collect the truffles and see if I could shape them into ball shapes rather than blobs.  I discovered that truffles were still squishy and no amount of shaping was going to work.  Seeing as truffles didn't look aesthetically pleasing, I figure I should probably try one and make sure they at least taste as they should.  So I get my mug of milk and pull out a white chocolate truffle.  I slowly ease the clingfilm off, only to discover that truffle is stuck to clingfilm!  So I now have to scoop truffle off clingfilm and into mug (again leaving chocolate behind!).  Sighing, I figure I may as well continue - I mean I can't waste any more chocolate! 
And ... Success!  It may not look as it should, but it tastes amazing!!!  (fighting the urge to say "amazeballs" here - thanks Tegan!)

Anywho, after the truffle fiasco, I decided that I would make some cupcakes to accompany these wonderfully unattractive, yet tasty, balls of chocolatey goodness. 

I begin measuring ingredients and mixing it all together.  It's not until I'm almost at the end that I realise I had my scales set to mls and not grams!  Crikey!  Not a good day for me in the kitchen!  But, I push on through, hoping that cupcakes will still taste good.  They take a little longer to cook, but come out looking pretty good :)

While these are cooking, I start on the decorations.  Yea that's right, I'm going to attempt to make decorations out of fondant.  I saw a demo at Kitchen Kapers a few weeks back.  I mean, how hard can it be??  Pfft!  I used to make roses out of clay all the time when I was a kid, and yet I can't seem to get fondant to do what I want it to.  Roses end up as big funny looking flowers, that keep sticking to me! 

I gave up on roses and made a couple of pigs (Tegans suggestion - that's right, I wasn't finished by the time she came round - birthday presents nailed!).  First pig stuck to board - learned from this and did second one on plastic bag :)
 
Now that cupcakes are cool, they are ready for the fun part!  Icing!  Made an awesome chocolate buttercream if I do say so myself.  Grabbed my new icing tip, scooped icing into the bag, and started to decorate ...
Bag burst.
Damnit!
 
One disaster after another.  Oh well.  They still taste good :)