Wedding Anniversary Cupcakes - Completed!

Finished cupcake painted with gold luster dust with a fondant flower

Wednesday after working a full day and a two hour commute down to Toms River, I was finally ready to start these four dozen 50th wedding anniversary cupcakes that were being picked up the next morning. Just in time, my 100 cupcake boxes had arrived that afternoon. Unfortunately, I had left several things I needed at my apartment in Hoboken. Being as I'm not the most organized person, baking out of two separate locations is going to be a challenge for me, and I'll probably end up with 10 of everything at some point. After getting all the cupcakes baked, my mom and I ran to Michael's craft store to pick up the missing things I needed.

Engineering my new cupcake boxes - I love that they have the
holders to keep each cupcake in place

There's still a problem with my parents' oven...I brought home my oven thermometer, and saw that the oven is fluctuating in temperature from 330-400. This may not seem like a big difference, but when you're baking cakes and cupcakes, it's extremely important to have an even temperature. Otherwise you end up with cupcakes that either won't rise or overflow. I also need to just work on filling the cupcake liners with less, especially in Toms River where I know the baking temperature is going to be a problem.

Me, covered in corn starch. Apparently while rolling out the fondant, I have a tendency
to wipe my hands on my pants...I need to start wearing one of the aprons I have

When I first started rolling out the fondant, embossing, covering the cupcakes and painting, I thought it was going to take forever. This is a really time-consuming way to decorate a cupcake, and when you have 3 done and 45 left to go, it feels like you will never be finished. Fortunately I got into a nice rhythm and had a baking assistant (my mom), and was able to finish them so that I could get some sleep before having to be up at 6 am to get to my real job.

Cupcakes all ready to be picked up

I wasn't able to be there the next morning when these were picked up, so I had to rely on my mom for feedback. She said the woman who ordered them was extremely happy with them, which is great. This was only my second time baking larger orders under pressure , and I think it's going to get easier (or at least maybe I will get less nervous) every time.

I'm heading back down to Toms River today for Easter and am baking 3 different types of cupcakes (rainbow, lemon, and coconut), a cake (to practice my fondant abilities), and a cupcake bouquet. Assuming no major baking catastrophes, I'll have posts up of all of these next week.