More Wedding Pics

Lauren, the bride of the second wedding I did in July, was nice enough to send me over some of the professional pictures after my last post. The pictures look incredible, and I'm so happy I can share them!

Some Wedding Baking in July

On top of my already insane schedule, many months ago I agreed to take on two weddings in July. Back in April and May, this seemed like a good idea. Things were a little calmer back then, I think. Flash forward to mid-summer when things could not be crazier, and suddenly it was time for these to be delivered.

Had to throw out almost everything in my fridge to make room for the cake truffles -
just 1/2 the vanilla here!

The first wedding was for their favors which were 300 cake truffles. This was the one that I thought would be the easier of the two weddings, and boy was I wrong. So very wrong. I was under-prepared for just how long it would take me to complete 150 chocolate and 150 vanilla truffles and mistakenly thought I was on the ball. It resulted in a meltdown of epic proportions that required me calling my parents to bring in reinforcements - more chocolate and some moral support (thanks mom & dad!). Once they were all finished and bagged though, it was such a rewarding feeling and I was really happy with how they turned out. I had some pretty great reviews from the bride and wedding guests, and am really happy that everyone was pleased with the outcome.

Bunch of cake truffles packaged

For the second wedding the following week, I had learned my lesson and was super, super prepared. There were lists of lists. I needed to make an 8" cake covered in fondant and 144 cupcakes decorated with individually cut and painted (with edible luster dust) fondant pieces. The fondant decorations were shaped like blossom flowers and butterflies. I was able to get those all done over a week in advance to leave me enough time to bake everything the night before pick up.

Start time - just home from class

I was fortunate that when my parents were up to help out with Wedding #1, they took me to the grocery store so I had a car to transport all the ingredients. Which was excellent being as it was 12 pounds of butter, 3 dozen eggs, 10 lbs of flour, 10 lbs of sugar, and many more heavy items! That would have been quite a struggle carrying that back to my apartment.

One of the 6 boxes of cupcakes

Close up of cupcakes

The one issue with this all was that the pick up was on a Friday morning. I'm in class until last Thursday night and don't usually get home until midnight. Class is my first priority, so I knew missing one wasn't an option. Not having the freshest cupcakes possible also wasn't an option, so I settled on the fact I'd have to start baking when I got home from class and stay up as late as it took. Everything went really smoothly though, and I was getting a new batch of cupcakes into the oven every 20 minutes - about as fast as I could expect to go.

Close up of cupcakes

Finished cake

Sometime around 3:00 am, the cupcakes were baked and frosted, and it was time to start the cake. Covering cakes in fondant is always really nerve-wracking for me, but it went pretty smoothly, and I was happy with the way the fondant decorations looked on the cake. I boxed everything up, ending just after 4:00 am.

End time - documented to remind myself how crazy I am

Crashing into bed was probably one of the best feelings ever. What a long day - I was up at 7:30 am to go to my "real" job, then class, then 12 dozen freaking cupcakes!!! Talk about a sense of accomplishment. Somehow I managed to remember to take pictures of everything too (it was on my to-do list!).

The bride was nice enough to send me a pic from the wedding set up - looks beautiful!

Looking back on both these orders, I think I was clearly insane for agreeing to do them, but I'm so happy I did! Not only did I get to be a part of these awesome people's weddings, but I got to test the limits of my baking, something I really love.

Guest Blogging at Food2

Today's an exciting day for me. Not only is it Friday (TGIF), not only is my midterm tomorrow (woo!), but my guest blog post just went up over at Food2, an affiliate of Food Network. Food 2 is an amazing website/blog dedicated to anything food-related. They were nice enough to ask me to do a post about the new Sex and the City movie with a cupcake spin, and I was happy to oblige.

Head over to check it out! Food 2 Sex and the City 2

For LA Dwellers, Soap Lovers, and Cupcake Aficionados

General Hospital stars with their namesake cupcake

One of the blogs I read, Food 2, had a really great post about a cupcake Vanilla Bake Shop (in Santa Monica) came up with in honor of an on-screen couple from the soap opera, General Hospital. I wanted to share because it had the recipe and an interesting interview. And because I've been totally negligent about my own blogging lately (internet issues for the past few days!). I hope to get a post up about the end of breads and the start of petit fours, but in the mean time, I can blog about other great baked goods that catch my eye.

I grew up watching soap operas with my mom, specifically All My Children. Funny story...my brother would also watch them during the day with my mom, and my dad had to put a ban on All My Children for Eric when he started talking about Adam Chandler as if he was someone we knew. (Sorry, Eric.)

Anyway, the "Lante" cupcake is a dark chocolate cupcake with a mascarpone filling and a chocolate hazelnut buttercream with chocolate pearls. Minus the hazelnut (which will send me running for the Benadryl), that sounds amazing. Fortunately, the recipe's there too. I think I'll be trying a nut-free adaptation of that in the future. For any readers who live in or near LA, Vanilla Bake Shop is giving away the Lante cupcake to the first 200 people who show up on May 5. Definitely worth checking out if you're in the area!

This one's for you Eric...

The Cupcakes I Almost Dropped on the Port Authority Floor

Due to time constraints and other plans this weekend, I had to bake an order that was due in Toms River Saturday on Friday in Hoboken. I left my apartment early Saturday morning in order to make it down in time, anticipating shore traffic that I did eventually hit.

Cupcakes, post near-fall and frosted in Toms River

While I was standing on line for the bus to Toms River, I reached into my bag to grab my bus ticket while balancing the heavy box of two dozen cupcakes in one hand. As I was just about to grasp my ticket, I lost my balance, and the box began wobbling out of my control. I immediately panicked, fearing these cupcakes would soon be scattered on the floor in front of me. For those of you who have never been to Port Authority (which is possible now that my blog has visitors from 37 countries and 45 U.S. states!! - yay!), it is by far one of the dirtiest places I have been. In all my years of traveling through Port Authority, I have never once witnessed anyone mopping the floor. I suppose there's no point though being as pigeons and other creatures are plentiful in the terminals.

Safe, secure, boxed and ready to go

If these cupcakes had hit the floor, it would have been nothing short of a disaster. I'd have to toss the infected cupcakes, and after that, I'm not sure what I would do. Probably cry for the entire bus ride and quit baking forever. Okay, maybe not that severe, but I would have had to show up with something at 1:00 pm at the person's house expecting a dozen Oreo and a dozen toasted coconut cupcakes. I'm wondering if Entenmann's would work in a pinch. Fortunately by some crazy maneuvering that pulled no less than 10 muscles in my back, I regained a grip on the cupcakes, and no cupcakes were injured in the process. Because they weren't yet frosted, it didn't even matter they all got jumbled in the box. This was extraordinarily lucky. The cupcakes arrived in TR unharmed and ready to be frosted.

Lessons Learned (White Chocolate Strawberry Cupcakes)

I learned a very important lesson this morning. I will never again put a container of cupcakes on my lap while wearing a pretty silk dress. I have since realized that the outside of the container is likely to have traces of frosting on it which will undoubtedly leave oil marks on the dress. This was a major bummer this morning.

Folding the strawberries and white chocolate into the batter

I had baked these white chocolate strawberry cupcakes last night for a coworker's birthday today. I started with my basic vanilla recipe and once it was mixed, added some white chocolate chunks and diced fresh strawberries. The frosting I used is white chocolate buttercream with fresh strawberries. These were seriously good, despite the melting issues they encountered in the heat.

Cupcakes fresh out of the oven, unfrosted

When I was younger, white chocolate was my favorite type of chocolate. Every Easter I'd get a white chocolate bunny in my Easter basket, that I probably ate that morning for breakfast (are you getting the sense I'm a healthy eater?). I was pretty surprised years later when I learned white chocolate actually has no cacao in it. It's just cocoa butter, milk solids, and sugar.

Finished cupcake on my desk, slightly melted

Cupcakes Down Under

So, tomorrow I leave for a 2 week trip to Australia and New Zealand. I am beyond excited, and being as I've been planning this trip for 4 months now, very happy it's finally here! My friend Vica & I have an awesome trip planned that includes Melbourne, Whitsunday Islands, Sydney, and Auckland.

This trip means I probably won't be blogging much, if at all, over the next two weeks, but I will be sampling a couple cupcake bakeries in Australia. Most notably:

Little Cupcakes in Melbourne: Melbourne is the first stop on the trip, and maybe the place I'm most excited to go to. My brother studied abroad there in the Spring of 2007 and I was so jealous every time I read one of his emails from there.

Photo from Little Cupcakes website

Cupcakes on Pitt in Sydney: My college, Boston University, had a really popular study abroad program in Sydney so I had a lot of friends who were there for several months. We're staying in the Central Business District (prior to doing research, we almost ended up in the Red Light District) and hopefully we will be able to find cupcakes there. There's Cupcakes on Pitt and the pictures on their website looked awesome. I'm hungry just thinking about them.

I'm reallyyyy excited for this Strawberries & Cream cupcake
from Cupcakes on Pitt. And about 20 of the others they have

I haven't been able to locate online a cupcake bakery in Auckland. You can be sure when I get back I'll be posting all the cupcake pictures from the trip. Make sure to check back in a couple weeks!

Wedding Anniversary Cupcakes Photos

The woman who ordered the cupcakes for the 50th wedding anniversary just sent me a few pictures from the party with them all set up. It looked really pretty, and I wanted to share.



I LOVE the ribbon she put around the cupcake stand I gave her to use. It looked so pretty. That blue is the same color the bridesmaids wore 50 years ago.

Easter Cupcakes!

Mini rainbow swirled cupcakes

I went home this weekend for Easter and used the opportunity (and available double oven) to bake somethings I've been wanting to try and some old favorites. One of my friends gave up cupcakes for Lent and I've been torturing her with pictures of all these cupcakes on my blogs.

Middle Tier - rainbow, lemon w/ lemon and mini rainbow

When it came time to break her cupcake ban, she knew exactly what kind she wanted - the rainbow, so those were on the must-bake list. I had also been looking at pictures of cupcake bouquets all week, and knew those would be good to give out to some family friends. Additionally, I've recently gotten some cake orders, and being as it's been a while since I've baked an actual cake, I figured it would be wise not to let the practice round wait until the day the order was due. That's going to be a whole separate post.

Bottom Tier - lemon w/ lemon frosting, vanilla minis, coconut

I made the rainbow first, setting aside a few plain white ones to make coconut-covered cupcakes for my mom. Lauren was a huge help with the rainbow, and I think she's even come up with a new technique to make them more tie dye than rainbow. I'll have to try it on the bigger ones in the future.


The cupcake bouquets were pretty awesome. I had seen them done by other people on a couple blogs, and they looked pretty difficult. While they were tricky, they weren't impossible. I decided to go with mini cupcakes. I love mini cupcakes, they're so cute, and on the bouquet they were even better. From every batter, I made a batch of minis and set these aside for the bouquets.



I piped frosting on the cupcakes so that they resembled flowers. Years ago, my mom and I took Wilton Course 1 at Michael's craft store, so I have some piped flower background, but it takes a few to practice on before I get the hang of it. While everyone else was dying Easter eggs, I was piping all these cupcakes.


These flower pots were on sale at Michael's this week for only 49 cents! In them, I fit half a styrofoam ball that would serve as the base for the cupcakes. The cupcakes are anchored into the styrofoam using toothpicks.


Everyone who was the recipient of one of these bouquets loved them. I really think they would be adorable as centerpieces on tables for a bridal shower or other event. They can also be done with more and larger cupcakes. I'm looking forward to experimenting with these in the future.

Cupcake Wine

This week on Cupcakes Take the Cake, I saw a post about Cupcake Vineyards wine. Seriously, what could be better?? This just combines two of my favorite things. On a whim, I decided to stop in a liquor store while out buying cupcake groceries Saturday and managed to find it. They make Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay. I went for the Sauvignon Blanc.


That night, a friend came over, and I opened up one of the bottles to try it out. Let's be honest; even if the wine wasn't any good (3 buck Chuck?), it probably would have been constantly stocked in my wine rack regardless. Fortunately, it was a really good bottle of wine for the price ($11). Now I can justifiably keep spending money on this. Sunday in the midst of my near cupcake breakdown, I was about to open up that second bottle of wine (at 7:00 am), but pulled through and that bottle is now on my kitchen counter. You know, just in case of the next baking emergency.

Also, it might be worth mentioning that this wine is not made from cupcakes. At least two people (who will remain anonymous...) have asked me if it was.

Grey Orange Cupcakes???

For the past couple days, I have had this image in my mind of blood orange cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream. I don't really know where this idea came from, being as I've never even had a blood orange before. There's a gourmet grocery store near my apartment though that has every fruit imaginable and ones I did not even know existed. So after frantic searching there today (for some reason, they were buried in the mountain of apples), I found some blood oranges.

Cross-section of the orange

I have been unable to find a citrus cupcake recipe that I'm 100% happy with. The last lemon cake I made turned out like a cake brick. I feel like the juice in the recipes really weigh down the cake. I wanted something lighter and airier. After doing some research, I was convinced that the correct way to go about this was incorporate beaten egg whites into the batter, rather than just mixing in the eggs as usual with the butter and sugar. Despite the questionable outcome of these cupcakes, one thing is certain, and that is the cake itself had a great texture.

The batter was a light pinkish color before it went into the oven. Originally, I anticipated it being a deep pink-red, but the juice was not as opaque as I thought it was going to be. If I wanted them to be darker, I would have had to add food dye to the batter, which I didn't want to do this time. It was quite a surprise when I took the baked cupcakes out of the oven, and they were bluish grey. I have absolutely no idea how this happened. It must have been some reaction between the ingredients, but I'm really unsure what it was. The only thing I can think of is maybe it was the egg whites. It's a total mystery though.

The grey cupcakes...wtf!?!?

The color of the cupcakes made me think they were going to be awful tasting. I mean, how many grey things taste great? I can't think of any off-hand. They actually tasted quite good. Like I said earlier, the texture was right, and the orange taste was subtle, but really good. Combined with the vanilla bean buttercream, it was one of my favorites I've made. If I could work on the cake color, this would be even better. The frosting was awesome. I really like vanilla, and the combination of vanilla beans and vanilla "crush" (available from Sonoma Syrup - I found mine at Marshall's) really made the frosting taste like vanilla ice cream.

Finished product - tastes better than it looks

I feel like starting this blog has brought my cupcakes bad color luck. Neither the cosmo cupcakes nor these turned out nearly the color I intended them to be. Here's the recipe for anyone brave enough to try it (really, it's kind of an awesome cupcake, it just needs food dye to override the grey).

Blood Orange Cupcakes
makes 9 cupcakes

Ingredients:
1 c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/8 tsp. salt
2/3 stick butter, room temp
1/2 c. sugar
1 egg yolk, room temp
2 egg whites, room temp
1/3 c. whole milk, room temp

1/3 c. blood orange juice
1/2 tsp. orange extract

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place liners in cupcake tins.
2. Beat the butter in a mixer on high. Add the sugar and beat on high until it is light and fluffy.
3. Add egg yolk and beat well. Add orange extract.
4. Sift dry ingredients together.
5. Mix milk with orange juice.
6. To the butter mixture, add 1/3 of the dry ingredients and mix until incorporated. Add 1/2 the milk mixture and mix. Continue alternating the dry and wet ingredients, ending with the dry.
7. In a separate, clean bowl, whip the egg whites into a light foam.
8. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.
9. Scoop batter into cupcake trays, 2/3 full.
10. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until cake springs back when touched.

Vanilla Bean Buttercream

Ingredients:
1/2 stick butter, room temp
2 oz. cream cheese
1/3 pound confectioner's sugar
1/4 vanilla bean, beans scraped out
1/2 tsp. vanilla crush

Directions:
1. Cream butter and cream cheese together
2. Add scraped vanilla beans and bean crush. Beat well.
3. Slowly add confectioner's sugar