Big Fun Cupcake Order

So, a while back, I hinted at a big large cupcake order that kept me up till 3 AM. Well, I am finally sharing with you the fruits of my labor. A partner at my office has the cutest sweetest daughter and they were hosting a tea party mid-week for 30 or so of her friends (plus their moms). I was asked to make the cupcakes to fit their blue and white color theme. I was super excited. Like many of you (do I have any non-baking blogger readers, doubtful) I just love any opportunity to bake.

A long while ago I had bought cupcake boxes from BRP Box Shop - a great buy. I have been using them for a long time now - love them. My sweetie pie assistant - who must have washed the dishes at least 6 times - also helped me by making labels for the boxes with my logo, blog, email and cupcake flavors. He was a champ - thanks baby.

I planned ahead - at least as far as the decorations went. I made the flowers using royal icing and my large flower tip. I had bought a flower nail head (is that what it is called?) and tried to make roses, but that didn't work out. I really need a wilton class - why is their NO Michaels or JoAnn's in San Francisco - seriously Internet do they think only people that live in the burbs want to be crafty? I don't think so.

My biggest plan ahead challenge was making butterflies out of candy melts. I got the idea from the book Hello Cupcake. I was lucky enough to get this book for my birthday from my awesome longtime friend Ashley R. (who may in fact be my only non-baker reader). Thanks Ashley. This is a great book. The first few butterflies - I don't want to talk about it. After failing on my roses, I was seriously distraught. But, I was determined to prevail.

The biggest problem that I was having with these was the fact that by the time I filled in the blue, the chocolate outline had dried which did not allow me to do the nice streaking. I was also having problems with the candy hardening in the zip lock bag and causing clotting, which made the candy melts shoot out when I applied more pressure to unclog the bag. Bad news bears.

I put my thinking cap on, and realized that what I needed was to keep the candy warm so it would stay nice and liquid. The solution? My heating pad. I took the cover off, put a paper towel on to of the pad, set the setting to low and layed the candy filled bags on top. IT WORKED! Like a charm. The candy stayed nice and melted the whole time it took me to make a dozen butterflies. Yay! In the end, I was very proud of my butterflies.

As for flavors. I went simple - considering I didn't start baking until 9PM. That was not planning ahead. I wanted to start early, I really did. But, I ended up heading over to the east bay to sign an offer on a house -which we didn't get - booo urns. Seriously (yes I say that alot), but the housing market in the east bay is brutal right now. So, late start it was. And, that meant vanilla vanilla, vanilla chocolate, chocolate vanilla, and very lemon lemon.

I did have a major failure on that epic baking night. I tried to make the Cake Slice Chai Cake into cupcake - cause hey, it was a tea party. So, I made the recipe as usual, poured the batter 3/4 full into my beautiful baking cups. And... they totally overflowed and filled the top of the cupcake pan - and I mean filled. There really was no salvaging. So, great cake, but not so great as cupcakes, at least for me.

Well, this is the end of the epic post about the epic baking night. Hope you enjoyed the pictures.