Spring cupcakes (Another baking FAIL)

The day after Easter, I decided to go out and indulge in all the discounted Easter goodies. I went out with the intention of getting a Cadbury creme egg (my guilty pleasure), but to my dismay, they had all sold out. WHYYYYYYYY.

I did bring home some jelly beans and some peeps, and I thought I would try my hand at some spring cupcakes. (They are listed at Food Network as Easter cupcakes, but we will ignore that, and pretend that we're not too cheap to buy full priced Easter treats.)

I used a white cake and lemon frosting recipe from i am baker, which sounded pretty spring-y to me. I decided to tint the frosting pastel green, and omit the green coconut, because I'll be honest, I am not super fond of shredded coconut on my sweets.

Baking FAIL # 1: I tried to read the recipe off the computer, and remember it while I was running around in the kitchen. This resulted in the omission of 1/4 cup of sugar. My white cake cupcakes were more like white muffins.

Baking FAIL # 2: I did not have any cake flour on hand, so I substituted all-purpose flour using the handy dandy Cook's Thesaurus. They said cakes would be "slightly less delicate and crumbly", but hole tamale, was that an understatement. These are the densest cupcakes I've ever eaten.

Baking FAIL # 3: To compensate for the slightly less sweet cupcakes, I added a little more powdered sugar to my frosting. OMGDIABETESINACAN. One bite of my mega sweet frosting may satisfy a sweet tooth for a decade.

Baking FAIL # 4: When I tried to recreate the uber-cute spring scene from the Food network's cupcake, I realized that either my cupcakes were too small, or these peeps were TOO DAMN BIG.

Look out! It's Peep-zilla!!!

UGH. So I just frosted the rest, and left them blank.

Poor cupcake. You have no outlet in which to express yourself.

MM ate one, and declared it edible, and if you eat it with a proper ratio of frosting to cupcake, I agree it's not too bad. However, my baking ego has been hit hard with this one. I had a whole strawberry shortcake planned out, but now I think I'll just used my berries to make smoothies.

Sigh. Any big baking fails out there to share?