A Better Bag of Groceries

Cart Confessions: Pillsbury Cupcake Mix & Frosting

Friday, June 25, 2010 at 06:54 AM

Welcome to Cart Confessions, a regular feature here on A Better Bag of Groceries where I like to show you that I am only human and that yes, at times some items with low NuVal scores land in my cart.

Today’s Cart Confession really takes the cake – literally.  The scores don’t get much lower than this!

Here’s the story…

My son has an amazing birthday.  He is born on the 4th of July.  It is such a great day to celebrate.  I remember that after he was born at the hospital in Boston, my husband pulled my hospital bed over to the window so that we could watch the fireworks together – the three of us.  Fast forward to seven years later and my son loves that his birthday falls on such a fun holiday.  We head to the nation’s oldest 4th of July parade in Bristol, RI, come back and swim at our community pool and watch the Boston Pops  at night on TV.  My son even gets to stay up late.  What my son doesn’t love is that because he has a summer birthday, he misses out on celebrating his actual birthday in his classroom.  However, the awesome teachers at our school have all sorts of ways to handle the summer birthdays:  some summer birthday kids celebrate their half-birthdays, others just pick a day (my son’s best friend chose St. Patrick’s Day), or wait ’til the end.   That’s what we do – we wait until the bitter end.  That meant that this week, in addition to packing up our entire house in preparation for our move, I had to make birthday cupcakes.

Now, the Healthy Mommy Blogger in me could have found a healthy recipe somewhere.  But you know, The Move.  I also could have just bought ready-made cupcakes.  However, for two reasons, I decided to go with a store-bought mix.

1. My son really wanted me to make the exact same cupcakes that I made last year – with the blue and red sprinkles and the little American flags
2. The Pillsbury Mix was so cheap at Target.  The cupcake mix was about $1, the frosting another $1 and the red and blue sprinkles were in the Dollar Aisle for $1 each.

So, how does the cake mix score on the NuVal scale?  Do you really want to know?

• Pillsbury Moist Supreme Classic Yellow Cake Mix:  3
• Pillsbury Creamy Supreme Frosting:  1

I guess it’s a good thing we don’t eat this every day!

Before I show you my less-than-stellar photo of how these cupcakes turned out, let me explain the logistics of getting these cheap, yet special cupcakes to my son’s classroom:

The cupcakes were all set to go, I frosted and decorated them the night before and they were resting on the kitchen table.  Come morning, I was teaching my 5:30 am Boot Camp at the gym and when I returned, I found that my husband had placed all of the cupcakes in the cupcake carriers (you know, the ones that I had not yet packed for The Move).  That was very nice, but he had removed all of the American flags because the tops of the carriers would not fit.  I had not yet taken the photo for the blog, so I thought to myself, “That’s OK.  I’ll bring them into the classroom, re-insert the flags, and take a picture then.”  No problem.  I drove my son to school, we headed inside his classroom with the cupcakes and he helped me to put all the flags back in, just as all the children were filing into the room.  I whipped out my camera to get the shot I needed for The Blog, when I saw the dreaded message, “Change the battery pack.”  Oh no!  So, I whipped out my Blackberry instead and got this shot.  Whew!

Happy Early Birthday to my Yankee Doodle Dandy!

Posted by: Melissa 8 comments

Posted in: Cart Confessions

Tags: cupcakes