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

Cupcakes for Wedded Bliss

It's over!  My baby boy is married to a wonderful girl and they are off on their honeymoon.  And I didn't embarrass them OR myself - the cupcakes were apparently a hit.  :)

There have been many times in past "projects" that I have maybe "bitten off more than I can chew" and afterward swear I will never do that again.  This is NOT one of those times.  

Despite getting only 6 hours sleep in the 48 hours prior to the wedding and having my feet and legs swell from standing for so long -- it was a TON of work, but I would SO do it again! 

The last couple of weeks were just too busy with wedding preparations, experiments, events, and baking (plus my oldest son had a surprise closing on his first house the Friday before the wedding, so we added some celebrating and moving to  all the other things necessary for the week of the wedding!)  I never really had a chance to write anything or edit any photos, so I'm getting a little caught up here.

• Lizard Confetti Cupcakes:  I found a lizard candy mold and pressed black pre-made fondant into it, then used a  fine decorating tip (#3, I think) to decorate them.  They turned out really cute!

• White Chocolate Frosting:  I made another batch of the chocolate cupcakes with the white chocolate icing and increased the amount of white chocolate.  What I found is that I still have to increase the amount of powdered sugar and it really didn't accomplish much.  I also discovered that this frosting does not travel well - particularly if it's hot outside.  And because it never really sets up, it's next to impossible to remove the cupcakes from the cardboard holders without squishing the frosting and sometimes the cupcake, too.

• FINALLY got the sunflower cupcake decorating perfected!  I'm really pleased!
• The little black and white sugar decorations I used on the white chocolate cupcakes a) weren't as large as the ones I printed and used when I was experimenting and b) because they were small, the white on white color disappeared into the frosting.

• A vintage hatbox - the clear plastic kind with a "quilted" lid and base - will work to transport a cake that is larger/taller than a typical Tupperware type cake taker.

• Purchasing cardboard boxes and cupcake inserts is the ONLY way to move 130 cupcakes from one location to another.

• Once cream cheese and buttercream frostings are WELL set up, they travel pretty well and are reasonably easy to remove from said boxes.  Squishy frosting that never really sets solidly (aka white chocolate) is a big problem.

• I learned how to use gum paste to make awesome sunflowers to decorate the 8" cake - all by myself <patting self on back> and they were delightful!

• Purchasing an 8" styrofoam dummy cake to practice is an EXCELLENT idea.  I was able to play around with colors, sizes, and ideas to see what worked without taking a chance on the real cake.  (I'll post a photo of the real cake soon!)

 

I'm still cleaning the kitchen.  There was a lovely, very fine layer of powdered sugar in my baking corner and I swear I used just about every piece of baking equipment in my kitchen.  Most of that is already clean, so today's main project is reorganizing and putting things away AND washing the cupcake stands.  The kitchen looks rather barren without all the cupcake equipment that has lived there, fairly permanently, for the last 3 months!

I'll post some photos of the finished cupcakes soon.

Countdown to W Day Begins

Holy cupcake, Batfriends!  That little alarm just went off in my head.  The first wedding is less than a month away now! 

Yesterday, I decided I'd better try my own version of Funfetti.  We're going to use pink and black sprinkles and I put them in Duncan Hines French Vanilla Cake mix.  And I added 1 tsp of clear vanilla just to see what happens.

So far, 24 cupcakes have been pretty reliable from the cake mixes I've used.  I intended to make 24 and try to squeek out a 25th so I could frost 5 in each design in each different cupcake wrapper to see how it comes out.   You know that saying about the best laid plans…

The BTB (Bride To Be) chose the 5 different cupcake papers.  2 are single colors (fuchsia and black) and the other 3 are patterned.  When I loaded the papers into the cupcake pans, I noticed that the single color ones seemed lighter weight but didn't think much of it. 

Pink &Black Liners are the tiniest bit shorter

When the cupcake batter was scooped into the cups, I only had 22 and managed to get a 23rd by scraping and scraping the bowl and taking a little bit from each of the other cupcakes.  What the heck?  I set them side by side and found that the plain black and plain pink ones are slightly shorter.  Unconsciously, I must have put more batter in the larger cups.  ALSO -- so far these papers haven't peeled!

I'm feeling a little more secure after decorating the cupcakes - I know I can do it now.  BTB approved all decorations and the amount of the jimmies used to make the custom funfetti cake.

I learned:

1. I'm blind.  I couldn't find the black and white wedding decoration sugar thingies at Country Kitchen, so printed the picture of them, cut them out and stuck the paper on so BTB could see what it would look like.  Almost.  We stopped by Country Kitchen and asked … the black & white sugar thingies were there all along.  I just couldn't see them!
2. If I'm piping on the frosting, don't put a crumb coat on - it looks weird.
3. The fancy carrot decorations look a LOT better than the little ones, even if in a cluster.  (Although, I wonder  how they'd look if I added fuzzy tops by hand.)
4. I am still not happy with my sunflowers. 

5. Am I the only one who thinks the black jimmies on the pink frosting look like mouse (pardon me) turds?

6. Speaking of looking like turds…. I need a LOT more practice using the large round tip to frost.

7. I still don't know why these cupcake papers haven't peeled.  The pink and white swirl ones and the zebra stripe ones are made by the same company that makes the ones I had so much trouble with (lemon cupcakes).  The only difference I can find is that there is a cupcake logo on the bottom of the troublesome liners.  Maybe those are different than the others?

 

8. For safety's sake, I need to bake most of the cupcakes in white Betty Crocker papers and then put them into the decorative ones.
9. The pink frosted cupcakes were supposed to have black lizards with pink features.  A squiggled blob of black frosting doth not a lizard make.  I could be in trouble here.