Cupcakes Upon Cupcakes Upon Cupcakes

 Today I had the opportunity to cater a wedding with cupcakes. They requested 400 cupcakes at first (they wanted 4 different flavors, 100 of each...but we were able to convince them that that was a heck of a lot of cupcakes, so the total ended up being 300. I baked all of the cupcakes on Thursday.

 Then I made the frostings on Friday. Then, this morning, I frosted and decorated. First, I set up the stations of each flavor. 

And then I got to work! I had the help of my trusty assistant, Husband, and we frosted/decorated for the next 5 hours or so. 

First, we have Oreo, a chocolate cupcake, with an Oreo cookie on the bottom, frosted with Oreo cream cheese frosting, and then sprinkled with Oreo bits. 

Up next is a Heath cupcake, a vanilla cupcake with a chocolate frosting, topped with Heath bits and a caramel drizzle. 

Here we have a raspberry lemonade cupcake, a lemon cake with a raspberry frosting, topped with delicious slices of lemon and a raspberry. (My fav!)

And lastly, a strawberry shortcake(ish) cupcake. A strawberry cake, with a vanilla frosting. Topped with (and this was so dang good) golden Oreos smashed up, and then combined with melted butter and strawberry jello. Absolutely dynamite. 

We then had to get them to the venue and get set up. It didn't take too long, but we probably took longer than necessary with our over-thinking. 

I loved how it ended up looking. And then I was told at the end of the night - they only had about 30 left. Not too shabby! And this was a great thing for me, in terms of learning. Someone that I work with does cakes professionally, and she gave me so many tips that made this go so much smoother than it has previously, and it was pretty stress-free and amazing. So hype to get to use that knowledge in the future! 

Chocolate Gingerbread Cupcakes

 I was watching a Lifetime Christmas movie this past weekend, and in it, they made a chocolate gingerbread cake. It looked AMAZING so I knew I had to try. I found a recipe on Pinterest, and decided to make it into cupcakes instead. So, here's the recipe: 

https://livforcake.com/chocolate-gingerbread-cake/

But instead of making it into pans, I put it into cupcake liners and baked for 14 minutes. 

Then, for frosting, I used this gingerbread one: 

https://www.imperialsugar.com/recipes/gingerbread-cupcakes-with-gingerbread-butter-cream-frosting

And frosted them, of course. 

They were so good! I was so happy and proud of them. 

Wedding Cupcake Prep, Day 2

 Today is frosting day! We started it off by dropping off my sisters car at the mechanic, Epifanio was in high spirits. 

Then I got home and surveyed all the butter/cream cheese that I needed for the day. 

Then, it was time to rock and roll. It took significantly less time to frost than it did to bake them, but, of course it did haha. When I was finished, 450 beautiful cupcakes were looking back at me. 

I am so proud of how these turned out! And of course they are delicious, I have been sampling throughout the day. 

Later, we found a problem. Because they wanted it to be a drive-through/by wedding, they needed these cupcakes individually wrapped. Which meant, they needed to find 450 plastic holders for these cupcakes. The wedding is in 2 days, so there's no way to get them from Amazon. So the mom contacted everyone she could and finally found muffin holders from Maverick. Unfortunately, the muffins they sell are GIANT muffins, so the cupcakes are sliding around in there. But, you gotta do what you gotta do. We had to just do our best with putting them in boxes for transport, as they were so slidy. 

Then, after we got everything in the boxes, I saw how the table looked after I had decorated the ones with the glitter. 

Did it take forever to get cleaned off of this table? ... and the floor? ...and the wall? Yes, but the cupcakes were totally worth it. And now, done! Just gotta deliver tomorrow and be all finished!

Wedding Cupcake Prep, Day 1

 Y'all, I have been hired to do the cupcakes for a wedding this week. They've asked for 450 cupcakes. Yes, you read that right, in these Covid times, they ordered that many. So today was prep day - I baked all of the cupcakes today, to be frosted tomorrow, and then delivered on Thursday. Yesterday was spent acquiring ingredients and decorations. Phew. My sister and the fellas not in school came to help with all of the baking. Epifanio wasn't as big a help as he thought he was. 

Literally he is right behind me at my mixer with all of these pots and pans, what an absolute lunatic. Luckily he's cute, so we can't get too mad. 

As I was about 1/3 of the way through baking the cupcakes, word came from the governor of Utah, they were turning Orem/Provo to orange level for the pandemic. That meant, no groups of people larger than 20. Uhhhh.... okay. So I texted the mom of the bride to ask her what to do. She said they were formulating, and would get back to me. After about 2 hours, she wrote back to say that they were just going to do a drive-by wedding, so to keep making the cupcakes. All of them, I asked? Yes, all of them. So, I kept on. And I baked. And baked, and baked. I lost my helper buddies around 5:00, and baked and baked until 9:30 (having started around 10:00 AM). Needless to say, I was exhausted. Looking forward to tomorrow! 

And now, you can know what 450 unfrosted cupcakes look like! 

(the flavors here are pumpkin chocolate chip, carrot cake, and chocolate)

Cupcake Time!

I've been making a lot of cupcakes lately, I have a business opportunity I'm trying to get happen, so I've been practicing and tweaking, etc. Finally this week is the big taste-test, to see if it's a possibility. I worked all day on these cupcakes, and then when I finally got them into their containers, I was just so excited, they look so cute!

Fingers crossed that it all works out!

Cupcakes, Cupcakes, Everywhere

I was hired to do the cupcakes for another wedding this weekend, so I took all day to work on them. And naturally, as is my luck, I got a wicked cold the day before, so as I made and frosted the cupcakes, I used a mask to cover my mouth and nose, and used gloves to make sure no germs got in. It made things take a little longer, but at least no germs were spread by me. They had ordered Snickers, lemon, and a Nutella cupcake. They looked pretty good when I was finished, I think.

They were pretty good, if I do say so myself. Lately, I feel like if I'm trying to make this cupcake business take off, I need a snappy name...but that'll take some time to think of. :D

A Week of Rafting

Well friends, I have survived a whole week of rafting, and being in a river. I know, I know, we're all shocked. BUT - I went and had an all right time. This is the first time I've been since our raft flipped, but I was like, I should probably get back in at some point. I was nervous and cried a little after we went through the rapid that flipped us, but overall, did all right! There was a rafting trip every day, and by today  I am really sick of water. For people who like water, that's all right, this is a great trip, but I get really sick of water after about 2 days. But I did find a cupcake shop here and found a delicious lemon cupcake.

Tomorrow we go home, and I am just so jazzed to be back in my own bed again. There's been too much traveling this month, I miss my house and Cookie!

Peppermint Patty Cupcakes

I had to make a dessert for my work lunch today, so I chose Peppermint Patty Cupcakes. Let's dive in.

      For the cupcakes
4 oz Dark chocolate chips
1 box Chocolate cake mix
3 Large eggs
1½ tsp Pure vanilla extract
¾ C Water
⅓ C Oil
½ C Sour cream
      For the frosting
1½ C (3 sticks) Unsalted butter at room temperature
12 peppermint patties
4 C Confectionary Sugar
3 tbsp Heavy whipping cream
1 tsp peppermint extract

Preheat oven to 350° In a microwave safe bowl, melt chocolate chips for 45-60 seconds or until melted. Stir until smooth and set aside. In a medium sized bowl, combine cake mix with remaining ingredients and mix until combined. Add melted dark chocolate last and mix into batter.
Line a cupcake pan with cupcake liners and fill each liner ⅔ full of batter.
Bake at 350° for 12-15 minutes. Check for doneness by inserting a toothpick in the middle of the cupcake. If the toothpick comes out clean, your cupcakes are done.
Allow cupcakes to cool for five minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool them completely.
For the frosting:
Allow butter to come to room temperature. Remove peppermint patties from wrappers and use a knife to chop into small pieces. Using the wire whisk attachment on your mixer, whip butter for several minutes until light and fluffy.  Slowly add powered sugar one cup at a time. Alternate one cup of powdered sugar with one tablespoon of heavy whipping cream. After adding the 4th cup of powdered sugar, increase speed to medium high and beat for another 3-4 minutes. Then add in the extract.  Add peppermint patties last and mix until combined.

So when I did the original recipe, the girl didn't have the extract in her recipe, and her frosting literally tasted like nothing. It just tasted like sweet butter, and not in a good way. So I added the extract myself, and it improved it greatly.

Delicious! (I cut a peppermint patty in half and put it on top for decoration)

Banana Cupcakes with Nutella Buttercream

I had some leftover bananas. You know the kind. As soon as they get to ripe, you recognize that you won't eat them anymore, so you set them aside for a baking purpose. With these ones, I decided to do a simple banana cupcake with a Nutella buttercream. Here's the recipe for the cupcakes:

1 box yellow cake mix
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1/3 C oil
3 eggs
1/2 C sour cream
2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line pans with cupcake liners.  Add mashed bananas, oil, eggs, yogurt and vanilla extract and stir well. Fill cupcake liners and bake for 15-20 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
And then for the frosting, I just used this old favorite. The cupcakes cooled, and I frosted them. Finally, I got to try one and
WOW
These are freaking delicious!

I recommend these in a big way.

Cupcakes, cupcakes, and more cupcakes.

So, today was the wedding. After getting home around 1:00 last night and having a shower before climbing into bed, I woke at 6:00 this morning to start the frosting. True to her word, my sister in law did make the cupcakes, and she did a great job on them! I just had to frost and decorate these beauties. I made three kinds, vanilla + vanilla, chocolate + chocolate, and lemon + lemon. I made 120 of each. and it took about 6ish hours to decorate them. For the vanilla, I wanted to use decorating pearls on top, but I couldn't find any, so these sadly went bare. Here is how many that is:

And now here are closeups of the cupcakes, in an arty sort of fashion. For decorations, I used small lemon slices on the lemons, and then chocolate dipped cookie bars (bought in the store, not hand-made) on the chocolates.

The lemons, I was nervous for, because I have never done a lemon frosting, but oh my gosh, they were so good! I was really proud of these cupcakes, and so happy I got them done in time!

Chocolate Strawberry Chocolate Cupcakes

So, after my disaster of the Raspberry Lemon cupcakes, I wanted to make another fruit frosting, to see if I could make it work. So, I made a regular ol' batch of chocolate cupcakes, and then I did a strawberry frosting. In my fantasy, I had saved this recipe and could share it for generations to come, but as I'm going back through my notes and trying to look through things, I see that I actually didn't even save it! How embarrassing! Let's take a look at the cupcake.

I pureed some strawberry pie filling in the blender, and then piped it onto the cupcakes, using a ziploc bag for ease. These were super delicious, but like the raspberry frosting, these had to be kept in the fridge, because the strawberry frosting was melting all over! Maybe that's just what happens with a fruit frosting. I'll fix this. I'll figure it out.

Cupcakes for a Shower

I seem to have a side business of cupcakes now. After doing my brother-in-law's wedding, I've been hired to do a wedding in June, and this weekend, I was hired to do a bridal shower. I was hired Thursday night for a Saturday shower, and that's SUPER short notice, but I was like, hey I can do this. So I made the standard vanilla, and my go-to Kit-Kat. Luckily it wasn't too stressful, and they looked pretty good, I thought.

Well, can't get the kit-kat picture to turn, but that's ok. Maybe this is a new thing I'll have, cupcake business in addition to whatever I do. I feel pretty good about this, I think I would love doing this. 

Mulit-Colored Frosting

My sister-in-law needed some help recently frosting some cupcakes. She wanted the effect of two different colors of frosting, mixed together onto one cupcake. I made some regular vanilla buttercream frosting, and then separated the bowl into two. I kept one vanilla, and made the other red. Well...tried to make it red. Despite using about 100 (slight exaggeration) drops of red food coloring, I couldn't make it go red, just pink. Then, I put some white frosting into a bag, and the reddish pink frosting in a bag. I then combined those two into another bag, fitted with a frosting tip. It was really hard to do, and hard to work with, but finally I got it going, and created:

Now, it mostly worked, and that's pretty dang cool. It's not exactly what I was thinking would happen, but I'm pretty pleased with the results. Would I do this again. Maybe. If I can figure out a better way of doing it, I absolutely will. I just think it looks really cool, how it turned out!

Super Bowl 2016

Today was the Super Bowl, as everyone knows, and as it turns out, the teams this year are ones that I actually don't really care about. Good job Broncos for winning, everyone is really jazzed for you. Let's talk about what I made. So I made some mini chocolate cupcakes, (just a regular cake-box chocolate recipe) and then a coconut buttercream frosting. Here's that recipe:

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4+ cups powdered sugar
5 tablespoons coconut milk

Cream the butter until nice and smooth. Add the vanilla and beat a few more minutes, until combined and creamy. Add the powdered sugar, a cup at a time (many whiskings in the meantime) until creamy. It was a little more than 4 cups of sugar for me. And I don't know if this was just me, but as I was frosting, the frosting seemed to...melt as I was going. It was weird. I put it in the fridge after I frosted them, to keep them nice and chill.

Then, we made bacon-wrapped tater tots. I took a package of bacon, and with all the bacon still together, I cut each piece of bacon into 3 pieces. I wrapped each piece around a frozen tater tot.

Then I threw them (gently placed) in the oven at 400 degrees 20 minutes. Take them out, flip the tater tots, and bake for 10 minutes longer. Delicious! Hopefully you and yours enjoyed the game, or enjoyed your Sunday otherwise.

Tres Leches Cupcakes

Now, I've made Tres Leches cupcakes before. They were...all right. But I decided to make them again, I was having a visiting teaching lunch, and the theme was Mexican. I tried a new recipe this time, here we go:

¾ cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, separated
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup coconut milk

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy on medium speed. Add egg yolks one at a time, mixing until combined. Add the vanilla, mix to combine. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl. Alternately add the dry mixture with the buttermilk to the creamed butter beginning and ending with the flour. In a small bowl, beat the egg whites on high speed until stiff peaks form. Gently fold into  cake batter. Fill paper-lined wells 3/4 full. Bake for about 18 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then take out let cool a little more, but not too much.  Stir together the evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, and the coconut milk. I used a chopstick and poked a bunch of holes in the cupcakes all over and then poured the mixture onto them - evenly distributing the milk between them.  Refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight before frosting. (Since it's so cold, I just put mine in the garage for a few hours.) Then I made a ducle de leche frosting:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2-4 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup dulce de leche

Cream the butter well, and then add the powdered sugar, until its  a good consistency that you like, and then add the ducle. Frost.

These were good, but again, I had the problem of them just not quite being wet enough. Maybe I'm too picky with my tres leches. But these are really good, and I do recommend them.

Frosting the Cupcakes

Well, I frosted all 255 cupcakes. It took about 5 hours, and then another to clean it all up (I think I also inhaled about 1 cup of powdered sugar), but I finished it all! I had my sister-in-law helping me frost, and I think we did a dang good job. Here's what they looked like after I got them all frosted:

And then this morning, my soon to be sister-in-law came over, put them into her mom's car, and off they went to St George. Let's all hope they travel well!