Dried Fruit and Pumpkin Mistake Cakes with Say Hi

I try to teach the kids in my class that making mistakes is a way to discover answers or, in some cases, create things that didn't exist previously. One of my favorite books to read when discussing this topic is Mistakes that Worked by Charlotte Foltz Jones. The book is all about inventions and ideas that weren't purposeful, yet wound up helping society immensely (or at least being accepted by it).

I won't say that the cupcakes I made for J-Fur's birthday are going to help society in any way, but they certainly were a mistake. J-Fur asked me to make pumpkin cupcakes according to a recipe she mail ordered from Amy Karol at Angry Chicken. One of the recipe adaptations Amy suggested is to add chopped nuts. I love me some nuts in my baked goods, so I grabbed the bag of chopped walnuts and began dumping. Problem was that J-Fur had made a trail mix in the bag by adding dried cherries and blueberries to the walnuts (and I failed to look before dumping). I had no desire to dig in the batter for the fruits so I figured I'd give it a whirl. I loved the result, J-Fur didn't or so she said, but when I went for a cupcake the next day, they were all gone.

Because the recipe came from Amy Karol's mail order I feel that it is not my liberty to post it. Like I mentioned above, I made a few changes so I am going to just list them here. To her recipe I added a 1/2 cup of nuts and a 1/2 cup of dried blueberries and cherries. For the cream cheese frosting, I cut the powdered sugar from 2 cups to 1.5 cups (I like my frosting to be cream cheesy).

While mistakenly dumping dried fruit into J-Fur's cupcakes I was enjoying some music from Seattle's Say Hi. The band's latest album, Ooohs & Ahhs was released back in March on Barsuk Records. "November was White, December is Grey" and "One, Two...one" are both off of that album. The video for "One, Two...One" was the band's first ever video. Pretty good stuff considering.

Say Hi-November was White, December is Grey