My Birthday Cake and Cupcake DISASTER!

My 21st birthday was Wednesday, and it started out as the most stressful birthday I've ever had! Tuesday night, my cousin came over the help me make cupcakes for my party. I wanted to make homemade confetti (AKA "funfetti") cupcakes. I started with Amy Sedaris' vanilla cupcake recipe, because I've been wanting to try it again ever since I messed it up a few months ago. I made the batter according to the recipe, but before filling the cups I folded in about 1/2 cup of rainbow jimmies. After I put the pans in the oven, I noticed the batter on the spatula looked funny. It was starting to separate like there was too much butter. Halfway through the baking time, I could tell something was wrong because the cupcakes had huge bubbles in the middle and the tops were concave instead of convex (sinking instead of doming). When the timer went off, a tooth pick came out clean, so I took the pans out of the oven and let them sit on cooling racks for 5 minutes. When I started taking the cupcakes out of the pan, they were SO soft and squishy they would barely hold their shape. They were extremely greasy on the bottom. They looked done in the middle, but they tasted "mushy." Soooooo... Out of 23 cupcakes, only 5 were salvageable.At this point I was so discouraged I didn't even want to try again. But Stephanie informed me that she hadn't used the Professional 600 Series Kitchen Aid mixer she got for Christmas! So I offered to help her break it in! This time we used Billy Reece's vanilla cupcake recipe. We followed the recipe exactly, then added a little less than 1/3 cup rainbow jimmies. Everything looked fine until halfway through the bake time when hell broke loose AGAIN! The tops were rising, but they were spreading out across the surface of the pan. They looked like giant sugar cookies! When I poked the top with a toothpick, it dragged the whole top of the cupcake down into the center, almost like it was deflating! I had to cook them about 6 minutes longer than the recipe called for. But at least these cupcakes were edible. Out of 24, all were salvageable. As ugly as they were, they COULD be eaten. THANK GOD!Fast forward to the next day. I had originally planned to make a cake also, but after the disaster the night before, I was in no shape to get near the oven again. My mom really wanted me to have a cake, so I went to the store and bought my favorite cake mix... red velvet! I let mom take over the cake duties while I started on the frosting. I started making a 7-minute frosting... 7 minutes passed... it wasn't getting very stiff... 10 minutes passed... 17 minutes passed. It was another disaster! The stuff got a little thicker, but never became frosting consistency. At this point I broke down and started crying. After some yelling and screaming, I pulled myself together and started making a Swiss meringue buttercream. The first few steps seemed to go smoothly, but when it came time to add the butter, I swear I saw the smiling face of Satan in the bowl of my mixer. With every tablespoon of butter I added, the "frosting" got soupier and soupier.

I couldn't take it anymore, and I didn't have time to waste. The party was supposed to start at 7pm. Here we were at 5:45pm with 29 naked cupcakes, 2 layers of red velvet cake cooling on the table, and NO FROSTING! Stephanie and I quickly went to the grocery store and bought 3 tubs of "fluffy white" frosting. When I tasted the frosting my initial reaction was "OMG THIS TASTES LIKE SUGAR COATED PICKLES!" However, we had no other choice. We covered the cupcakes and cake in the disgusting white glue being sold as frosting, threw some sprinkles all over everything, and called it a day!

Here are the reasons we came up with for the baking fiasco that probably took 5 years off the end of my life:

1. The weather was unusually hot and humid.
2. The addition of rainbow sprinkles ruined the cupcakes.
3. We used 1% milk to make the cupcakes.
4. I used pasteurized egg whites from a carton to make the 7-minute frosting.
5. Satan hates birthday parties!

Any thoughts? Or Vicodin? (j/k, I do not condone drug use!)