Dessert | 300 Cupcakes

So, we survived the 300 cupcakes!  Yes, we, Ty and I survived baking and frosting 300 cupcakes.  My husband is amazing, he canceled watching football with his friend twice to help me frost the cupcakes.  There is no way I would have been able to finish and it wouldn't have a been a tear free occasion {woot!}.

Close up of the carnation cupcakes!

I prepped all my dry ingredients for the vanilla cupcakes Friday night.  On Saturday morning with my production line all ready to go, I baked for 4.5 hours straight!  We then took a break and enjoyed a lovely dinner at Disneyland Hotel's Steakhouse 55 with some of our friends.  Dinner lasted a little longer than I thought and we returned home hoping to frost half the cupcakes... boy, was I wrong.  I made 24 cups of vanilla Swiss meringue frosting and that took about an hour and a half (my mixer is small and I could only make 6 cups at a time).  I showed Ty how to pipe a carnation (thank you to Blue Note Bakery, your online video is great!) and off he went.  I took over a little while later and by the time midnight rolled around, we only had about 48 completed.  I figured out that it took us about 30 minutes each to pipe 24 cupcakes... not promising.  


The next morning we woke up around 8:30am and started piping right away.  We piped from 8:30am to 12:00pm.  I think Ty finally understands the pain associated with cake decorating, ha! 

All in all, the totals for the weekend:
13 hours for prepping, baking and frosting
10 pounds of butter
75 eggs used 
4 Harry Potter movies that played in the background that weekend 

12 boxes that held 2 dozen cupcakes each, plus one box that held a dozen

It was awesome to see all of them in their boxes!  It was a definite sense of accomplishment

 Thank you again to Ty who was the best sous that weekend, I still wish I was able to take a picture of you piping pink carnations for our kids one day!  And thank you to Salisa and the Gamma Phi Beta Sorority for this opportunity!!!


Until next time!
~Danielle

Dessert | Carnation Practice... Marigolds

This weekend, I am baking 300 cupcakes for the sorority Gamma Phi Beta... 300!  I'm both excited and scared...  I don't know if my little kitchen can handle this, but it's going to have to.  I was asked to pipe carnation flowers, I learned by watching this video that no longer works and my flowers look more like marigolds than carnations.  I wanted to share with you my practice run, my marigolds below.  Wish me luck today as I start on the 300 cupcakes!

Wedding Cake for Katherine and Kevin

This is the largest wedding cake I have done to date and I was pretty proud of myself (no tears!).  The bottom tier is chocolate and the other two tiers are vanilla buttermilk.  Each tier has three layers of cake, so for the filling I did chocolate ganache and cream cheese frosting (per request of the bride).  I pulled the piping pattern from the bride's dress.  The dress was so gorgeous! 

My favorite applique on her dress were these two mirroring flowers.  I pulled this detail into the top tier of the cake.  I didn't know if the bride and groom were going to have a cake topper, so I used these two flowers to symbolize Katherine and Kevin.  

I got a text message from the bride's sister during the reception letting me know that the cake was delicious and the bride's mother emailed me the next day to let me know that the bride thought the cake was "amazing."  Just starting out, it's so nice to hear comments like that.  So thank you to the family!  Congratulations to Katherine and Kevin!  I wish you two the best! 


Until next time, happy baking!
~Danielle