My Aunt's Wedding Party - Part 2

When I woke up the Saturday morning (at the crack of dawn because the kids were running around), I discovered my aunt had left the window open in the kitchen, and the freezing cold night/morning air had dried out the cupcakes a bit (initially I thought they might be frozen). This was a little disappointing, but they weren't too bad. I mixed some cream cheese frosting, covered the cake in it, and then rolled out white fondant to cover the cake with. The fondant amused my cousins to no end; I gave them each a small piece to play with. I think I may have inspired some future bakers. I really need practice when it comes to covering cakes in fondant. There was a pretty large crease in the back of the cake. Given that this was only my 3rd attempt at a fondant-covered cake though, I'd say it wasn't too bad.

After the cake was covered, I set it aside and piped the frosting onto the cupcakes. On each cupcake, I placed one of the flowers I had made the night before. Then, I painted the cake with sparkly white luster dust and "glued" on the flowers and S with royal icing. Overall, the cake did not come out looking too bad. As long as you were looking at it from the right angle (the back was sort of a mess).

One thing I would do over would be to pipe a ring of buttercream around the edge of the cake layers before filling it with the mousse, which was way too soft and got squeezed out of the cake with each additional layer that was put on top. I should have thought to do this in the first place. I also can't wait to take a class to improve my fondant capabilities. I'd love to do more cakes in addition to cupcakes.

My Aunt's Wedding Party - Part 1

This past weekend, my aunt threw a party to celebrate her recent marriage. She and her husband had a tiny ceremony in North Carolina with just the two of them and my aunt's two kids, so she wanted to have a larger party to celebrate with her friends and family. I immediately offered to bake the cake and cupcakes. After work on Friday, I made the very long, traffic-ridden journey out to Effort, PA where she lives. If you've never been there, it's really quite an experience. When she asked where I was en route, my response was "Well I just passed a fireworks store and an ammo supply shop."

My painting workstation

My aunt is not a baker and her kitchen is virtually devoid of any baking equipment or ingredients. Earlier in the week, I had given her a grocery list of things I would need, and I brought a few things of my own like a mixer and fondant. Unfortunately, shortly after I began baking, my mixer spazzed out and broke. I was pleasantly surprised when my aunt pulled out her own hand mixer. I don't know what I would have done if she didn't have one. Mix things by hand? How did people bake before the introduction of motors for mixers?

Close-up of the flowers

The first thing to go into the oven was a 6 inch round vanilla cake. I set aside the leftover vanilla batter, mixed some chocolate, and prepared the marble cupcakes. Once the cake was cooling and the marble cupcakes were in the oven, I began mixing one of my favorites - red velvet. I've talked here before about my love of red velvet; to me it's such a classic, awesome flavor. In the event that I one day get married myself, I want a red velvet cake or cupcakes (baked by me of course). My younger cousins were shocked to see the bright red batter though. After declaring it looked like something off a horror movie set, I don't think I would have been able to bribe them to eat it.

Unfrosted cake - the filling spilling out

After everything was baked and set aside, I rolled out some fondant and cut the flowers that would adorn the cake and cupcakes. To expedite the process, my aunt painted them with a sapphire-colored luster dust while I "glued" on the edible pearl centers. Her new last name begins with 'S' (as did her former last name), and she requested a monogram on the cake. I formed the S out of a rolled snake of fondant, set it aside to dry, and painted that with the luster dust as well. After filling the cake with chocolate mousse I had prepared earlier and fresh raspberries, I covered it with plastic wrap and stored it for the night in the refrigerator.

This post is pretty long, so I'm going to split it into two and post the rest tomorrow. To be continued...

Extremely Busy Weekend!

This weekend I had 3 orders to complete - a surprise 30th birthday that was fiesta-themed, a friend's niece's 2nd birthday, and a coworker's daughter's birthday. The fiesta needed 120 cupcakes in an assortment of margarita, marble, and vanilla with coconut. In addition to all those cupcakes, they also had me do a fondant-covered cake to go on the top tier of the cupcake stand! The 2nd birthday party was just 2 dozen mini rainbow cupcakes, and the coworker's order was 80 cupcake truffles. I have a problem with time management when it comes to baking as it is, so it is no surprise I ran into trouble this weekend.

I thought I was on a good track. In fact, I had planned on waking up Saturday morning, doing the cupcakes, dropping off Morgan's order of minis, getting a mother's day gift and maybe even taking a nap before I had to drop off the fiesta order in Hoboken (I was baking in Toms River). I was so ambitious with my time that I probably even thought it was feasible to solve world peace in the extra time between the orders and delivery. I was so, so very wrong. World peace will probably have to wait until next weekend.

The assembled fiesta order. I was really proud of this!

Around 12:00 pm on Saturday, I started to get panicky and think I was not going to finish in time. I called my mom who was in Philly picking up my sister at least twice crying. I was having a major problem with the margarita cupcakes. The recipe I had was really difficult to follow and for some reason grouped together the frosting & cupcake ingredients and I kept adding the wrong things or the wrong amounts. Hence, 2 batches of cupcakes in the trash before I got a good one...hours later.

Close-up of the cake

At about 1:30 pm, my parents came back home, and I could have dropped to the ground crying tears of joy that I had someone to help me. I seriously would have never finished on time if my mom didn't come home. Kate was also a supreme baking assistant, helping me out both Friday night and Saturday by going out of her way to pick up ingredients for me and then driving me up to Hoboken to help me unload the cupcakes. My sister Melissa was clutch as well and ran to Michael's to grab me more cupcake liners being as I had gone through way more than I was anticipating.

By some miracle, I ended up finishing approximately 3:50 (I needed to get in the car to have them there by 4:00), quickly took a shower (which was for the best of everyone who was going to see me), and loaded up Kate's car with the 6 boxes of cupcakes (oh yeah, did I mention I made an extra 2 dozen of 2 completely separate kinds for a friend's party I was going to??), the cake, stand, 36 personalized individual cupcake take-home boxes, and my suitcase I need for when I go to Australia in two weeks. I really did not calm down until about 6 beers into the party I attended that night.

Individual take-home boxes for cupcakes

The drop off of all the cupcakes went so well. Everyone seemed really happy with them and everything made it there in one piece! I LOVED the idea to have the individual boxes. I hope someone else in the future wants to do that as well.

Sunday, I went back down to Toms River for Mother's Day and made the 80 cupcake truffles. I gave my baking intern (my mom) the night off from washing dishes, a fair Mother's Day gift I thought. I dropped those off today and am happy to be done baking at least for a few days. I never thought I'd say this, but I need a tiny break from cupcakes...at least until the next whim strikes me!

Cupcake Truffles - the blue were vanilla & pink were strawberry

Again, thank you SO much to everyone who helped out this weekend. This was the biggest batch of cupcakes I've done to date and it took just about every resource and bit of emotional support to make it happen.