The Great Cake B ake - or a probable recipe for insanity

I have these two parts of me - the very direct, keep it organized and simple part and a creative part. The creative part succumbs to odd activities and projects - sometimes ones that never get completed. The organized part often stays too busy too allow the other part to succumb. And sometimes the two parts battle it out. Win-win, win-lose, or lose-lose: I've suffered them all.

Enter Saphira's Birthday. Plan A was to just have a quite song at home with gifts from her family - after all, what does a one-year old who we don't give sugar to need a party for? And then things kept happening - like meeting a mother with a child who has the same birthday, like the country team meeting falling on that weekend, like the newest doorkeeper giving Saphira a treat every time she is on duty and saying she is going to act like a granny since her granny is far away, like the fact that the whole church has been stand-in family for Saphira, like making a photo album and not having the traditional picture of 1st b-day cake smeared all over the place.

Creative side put her foot down and said something had to be done - She decided we needed a big cake and 100 cupcakes to bring to church. She decided on a ladybug theme.

Organizer queen still can't figure out what the big cake is for, and hasn't quite figured out the decorating of all the cupcakes - but she did manage to win out on mini cupcakes instead of big ones (less baking, less frosting, less cost) and after Creative Girl tried making about 30 cupcake liners herself out of parchment paper, she took over that project as well and found a woman to meet her on a street corner and sell her some mini cupcake liners. Now those were a great find.

So far they've both won on the choice of cake - Creative Girl obviously likes variety and Organizer Queen doesn't see the point in baking a lot of cakes unless you discover the best one - so while all the cakes will be chocolate (what other color can you have for a ladybug??) the following recipes (in order of niceness) have been used.

http://www.joyofbaking.com/ChocolateCupcakes.html - method really is everything, they say - while most involved, this recipe gave the best chocolate flavor overall - texture was also different than the others. The top of this cake was matte rather than glossy which was also probably due to method.

http://www.hersheys.com/recipes/4602/Chocolate-Sour-Cream-Cake.aspx (really almost 1st) - very very rich, easier than the 1st recipe, but a bit more pricey with ingredients

and http://www.hersheys.com/recipes/4754/Black-Magic-Cake.aspx - wins on cost and color - but flavor almost tastes boxed :-(

Was going to do a 4th variation - but Organizer Queen missed the fact that she would have to give the mini cupcake tins back when she did and so she didn't have the buttermilk she needed for the other recipe - we settled on a second batch of the sour cream for ease of baking and because there was lots of sour cream.

Would expound on this theme more - but Organizer Queen says that time is ticking and I still have another cake to bake. (If you're wondering - OQ won out on the doing it in advance and putting the cakes in the freezer, will just have to figure out the frosting bit as we come closer to to celebration day/week)