Ta Da! My Wedding Cupcakes

I'm still having a hard time believing I actually was able to make 130 wonderful cupcakes that my son and his (now) wife would be pleased with.  I'm also starting to go through withdrawal - it feels strange to not have a specific goal to bake for.  While I was searching for recipes and hints and help, I came across a LOT of yummy sounding cupcake recipes and I'm anxious to try them out now so that helps.

Before going any further with patting myself on the back, I can say with certainty that I would never have been able to pull off the wedding cupcakes without  this  blog post on Baa Baa Cupcake, Have You Any Frosting: 

http://baabaacupcake.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-bake-wedding-cupcakes-at-home.html

So … without further ado, here are my cupcakes

Sunflower Cupcakes - White Wedding Cake

 I'll post a full photo of the cake in my next post.

Lizard Cupcakes - Confetti Cake

Dinosaur Cupcakes - Lemon

Carrot Cupcakes

And finally -- The cupcakes set up at the wedding

Round Two - Me vs Cupcakes - THE RESULTS

Here are the results of my definitely non-scientific test of cupcake liners.  The liners I used were based on what is available at our local grocery.

We went and got 4 packages of cupcake papers. 

• Betty Crocker liners (White)
• Reynolds Foil liners (Silver and White)
• (Pink) Reynolds StayBrite™ Baking Cups

• (Blue) - Cupcake Creations ™ by Siege™ (Identical, except for color, to the green set that peeled 

I set them up in my 12 cupcake pan and then in all kinds of configurations in my two 6 cupcake pans.

When they came out of the oven, I let them sit about 5 minutes in the pans and then took out two of each kind.  They were still very hot.  I left the rest in the pans to cool enough to not hurt myself to remove them from the pans.

Within 5 minutes out of the pans, the cupcakes that I had removed when they were very hot - the ones in the blue wrappers - had already peeled!  The rest remain fine.

After 3 hours, the same two  that peeled immediately remain the same - no more peeling, no less.

I left them overnight and all blue ones are peeled.  The pink ones had peeled partially.  Here is the full report:

In the pan with the 12 cupcakes --

• Blue - All 4 papers peeled - both the ones I took out of  the pan right away, and the ones I left
• Pink - 1 peeled, 2 had partially peeled on one side, and 1 was fine

• Betty Crocker White - 2 of 2 were perfect

• Foil with white liner - the white paper part was perfect and the foil had slightly pulled away
• White liner from the foil (didn't use foil) - pulled in one spot, but overall not bad
• Foil with no paper liner - perfect

In one of the pans with 6 cupcakes --

• Foil with white liner - perfect

• Foil with no paper liner - perfect
• Pink (2) - one peeled on one side and the other one was good
• Betty Crocker White (2) - both perfect

In the other pan with 6 cupcakes --  I used the blue papers as the inner paper (liner) inside various other liners

• Blue  in Pink - peeled

• Blue in white liner from the foil  liners - peeled
• Blue in foil liner only - peeled

• Blue in foil lined with white - peeled

• Blue in silicone cupcake liners (2) - both peeled

THE WINNER of this "contest" was the Betty Crocker white liners.  I had NO trouble whatsoever with them.

The Reynolds foil in all configurations worked extremely well.  Only one white paper only, pulled away in one spot.

The Pink Reynolds StayBrite™ was not very good.  Only two of six were good.

The Blue Cupcake Creations ™ was a total failure.

Now, in defense of the liners that did not win I wonder how they would do with a regular, plain old out of the box cake mix.  The recipe I used seemed to deflate as they cooled - I imagine this is due to the fluffy egg whites.  This may mean that the test was good only for this particular recipe or similar recipes.   The recipe also used buttermilk.  Some people reported that they had trouble whenever they used buttermilk in the recipe.  Therefore,  more testing is essential with all types of cupcake recipes.  I would like to TRY to use one of each kind of cupcake liner whenever I make cupcakes and keep track of the results.

One last comment about the blue liners - these liners are very nice, heavy weight papers.  The packaging states "Bakery Quality / Easy Peel / No Muffin Pans Needed! / Grease Proof.  They actually seem to be doing what they are supposed to be doing.  Unfortunately, for my purposes - the wedding cupcakes - they just don't seem to work.  I think I have no choice but to bake in the Betty Crocker white liners and put the baked cupcakes into the pretty, decorative liners before frosting.

But here's the really good news:  Hubby took the cupcakes to work and said they got seriously rave reviews!  I think we've got a winner!

Tragedy Strikes My Cupcake World

O M G  -- What am I going to do???  The cupcake papers have come off the better texture/tasting lemon cupcakes!  This CAN'T happen with wedding cupcakes!

Wonderful lemon cupcakes - horrifying cupcake wrappers!

This is the absolutely FIRST TIME EVER that this has happened.   With decades of cupcake baking under my proverbial belt, how could this possibly have happened NOW?  The liners were the ones I used with the Easter cupcakes and there was no problem at all!  In fact, I remember thinking that the batter on this particular recipe acted similarly to the white wedding cake recipe I used for the Easter cupcakes and I thought it must have something to do with only using egg whites.

There were signs that this was happening, but since I'd never seen it before I didn't recognize it.  Not that there would have been anything I could do about it but ...

Now I've searched on the internet for the cause of this TRAGEDY and found no definitive answer! It's comforting  that I'm not the only one to have this problem -- but that doesn't help AT ALL.

The best remedy I found was in Sunday Belle  http://www.sundaybelle.com/making-the-cupcake-liner-stick-to-the-cupcake/     (Strangely enough, I found a kindred soul in this blog - mixing fashion and baking!)

Now I'm going  to make the cupcake recipe that caused the peeling a couple more times and see if her suggestions help.  If not, I've got to use a different batter or figure out some way around the peeling paper dilemma.

Oh, and as I'm wailing over this mysterious tragedy, hubby says the Easter cupcakes had started peeling when he took them to work, but he just thought it was because they were in a plastic container.

Obvious which wrappers are a problem - but why?

Duelling Lemon Cupcakes

My son always requests lemon cake with lemon frosting for his birthday cake, so of course, one of the wedding cupcake flavors will be lemon on lemon.

Now, I know I could take the easy way out and just use cake mix and pre-made frosting but where's the fun in that?   More than that, I want newlyweds to have "special" cupcakes.  I'm satisfied with the white wedding cake cupcakes.  I'm satisfied with the carrot cupcakes, but need to work on a good cream cheese frosting for it.  I'm ok with the "funfetti" cupcakes using the wedding colors.   But I haven't even started checking out chocolate cupcakes yet.  Yikes!

So I've been wandering around online and in my cupcake books and even my regular cookbooks, looking for THE lemon cupcake recipe and I've narrowed it down to 3.  Once I decide  on which two I want to make both and try them side by side to see which is better.   Actually, I have been working on these cupcakes off and on all week.  I thought it would be easier if I made the frostings first and bake them  another day and finally made them last night.

The first is a lemon cupcake I found online  ………  so far, it's winning the race.  The frosting is ... O M G … it's amazing!  I think you could put this stuff on liver and onions (sorry, liver lovers of the world) and it would be delicious.   It's from MyBakingAddiction  http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/lemon-cupcakes/

So, I made the frosting from the second recipe - also found online.  It's just a tiny bowl full!  I'm a bit disappointed .  Maybe it's because the recipe instructions used mini cupcake pans - maybe you don't  need so much frosting.

First Recipe -   Looks pretty good

The oven preheated and I got the first recipe finished.  It's pretty easy and straight forward.  This is a huge plus because I know that no matter how well I plan and prepare, the 2 days before the wedding will have me suicidal.  Since these are just test run cupcakes, I put them in the white papers that were between the foil papers.  I even got 30 cupcakes from the recipe.  (I'm not even sure if you're supposed to use the foil in direct contact, but I have in the past and no one has died so far.)  They baked nicely and I'm pleased with the look.  Unfortunately, the texture and taste was just .. meh.

By the time I got to the second recipe - the one from MyBakingAddiction - the kitchen was 80+ degrees and the butter sticks were REALLY soft.  I'd taken the two bowls of different frostings out of the fridge so they wouldn't be so hardened that it would be difficult to pipe.

Second Recipe - Not quite a pretty

This recipe reminds me a lot of the white wedding cake batter but not as thick.  The recipe uses 4 egg whites, so that makes sense.  It also uses cake flour, which I don't mind because I do have plenty of it.  It also calls for lemon zest, so I ended up with 2 lemons worth of juice that I didn't use - I put each lemon's juice in a separate keeper cup.  That way the next time a recipe calls for "the juice of one lemon" - I've got that (so there!)

These cupcakes came out beautifully, as well.  I was only able to squeeze out  23 cupcakes so it made a few of the papers not as full as the should have been.  That's ok - I'm EXPERIMENTING!

The kitchen was so hot by this time that my brain may have melted.  I removed these cupcakes from the pans right away.  Honestly, I don't know why.  I usually let them cool about 5 minutes in the pans so I can touch them with my hands when taking them out.

Both recipes together

I'm saying this because …..  Wait for it … tomorrow I'll tell you.  Leave a comment if you think you've guessed.

Lemony Dinosaurs

The results are in!

My husband took the cupcakes to work with him.  It's a small office, consisting of 3 women and 5 men, so I figure there should be enough diverse tastes.

First, the cake.  Rave reviews!  Yay!!!  Everyone loves the taste and the texture, which is leaning toward being almost like angel food cake, but not that thick and dense.

Second, they liked the decoration and one of the girls especially liked the spiky green grass.

I talked with the June fiancée last week and we've sort of decided on the remaining decorations for the cupcakes.  And, we added a flavor - lemon. 

This son always asks for lemon cake for his birthday and this year, of course, I made cupcakes - with the usual boxed version of lemon cake, but I made buttercream frosting and flavored it with lemon flavoring.  My hubby gets awful blisters in his mouth from citrus acid and I've learned to either use flavoring or make sure it's cooked and/or with a lot of milk product to cut the acid down. 

This son is such a kid at heart.  :)  I hope he never changes.  This is the one who loved Barney, and dinosaurs - the Stegosaurus, especially.  While the other one likes weird things like alligators and sharks in the bathtub (JOKE!!) this one likes goofy things.  Like stegosaurus bathtub stickers.  You get the idea.

I'm lucky enough to live reasonably close to Country Kitchen Sweetart that a couple weeks ago, hubby took me there to scout for what kinds of things are available and to pick up some cupcake wrappers.  We also picked up a catalog that we gave to the June fiancée.  She had looked through it and showed me what she liked as decorations.  At first, she was concerned that some weren't "wedding" enough but I told her that it's HER wedding.  If she wants blue brontosauruses  swinging from trees THAT is what she should have!  (Thankfully, she doesn't because there ain't NO WAY I could pull that one off!)

Lemon cupcake with dinosaur sprinkles

So, between the two of them it has been decided that there will be lemon cupcakes with lemon frosting and hard sugar dinosaurs as decoration.  I was kind of hoping they'd decide on the decoration I did on son's birthday cupcakes - colored sanding sugar and little dinosaur sprinkles because I really thought it was cute and pretty.  But they like the dinos, so dinos it will be!

Lemon cupcake with star sprinkles

Next, I have to find a really good lemon cake and frosting.   For the fun of baking, I prefer to try not to use cake mixes but time's running out so I might not have a choice. 

For today, though, I have some blueberries that never made it into my yogurt so I'm hunting either blueberry cake recipes or blueberry muffins.  I have a blueberry muffin recipe and I hate it.  I have a blueberry bread recipe and it's really good, but I want to try something different.