Wedding Cupcakes

After I pipped these I then realized that the tip I used was probably not the best choice.  If you don't know why, well you are more mature than me.

  Oh man, this is the year of weddings for us.  I like weddings usually but I sort hate them too.  I mean I had the wedding I planned, but looking back I would so do some different things. And going to all these weddings makes me think of all the cool things I would do now. I have told hubby my next wedding is going to be nothing but sugar and candy and some booze.  Oh and maybe some sort of vows.  I have my priorities.

  I may even invite him too.

My new pasta roller, which made this so easy.  Also my messy table, but what else is new.

  So the first for this year of weddings was my mother in laws.  Which is sort of crazy!  She married her teenage sweet heart, after not seeing him for almost 40 years.  So sweet and if you knew the hard things she has been through, she totally deserves it.  And she asked me to make cupcakes to boot.  Only thing is she wanted them to be from scratch, which if you know me, is a sticking point.

  Just a fun fact, cake mixes are great, for certain things.  Like cake balls, or for kids, it works great.  But for adults and fancy things I do scratch.  But you know I must love her if I did them from scratch without even a thought to using a mix. I mean she did give me Hubby, which at some times I am not sure if I should thank or curse her for.  At the time of the wedding, it was thankfulness, so from scratch it was.

I got this huge long strip of fondant out of like a golf ball size of fondant.

See how thin that fondant is?  Well next time I will do it a bit thicker, I lost a good many flower petals when they dried.  Also I usually would have used a fondant cutting mat or parchment, but I was in a rush and the table was actually clean, so I went with it.

   The bride requested vanilla cupcakes with chocolate icing and ribbon cupcakes with white icing.  Now I have no idea what ribbon cupcakes are, so I said something like "do you mean red velvet?"  And she was all "yeah, that is what I said."  I may have to hurt her one day, lucky she cracks me up.

  So I have made red velvet whoopie pies, cake balls and even cupcakes. But the cupcakes were made with a mix as a base.  So I had to find a new recipe, and dang it all, none of my baking books had one.  Well maybe they did but I was not getting off the sofa to look when I was all comfy and on my lap top.  So I went to pintrest and found this recipe I had pinned from  My Baking Addiction.

  Now the week before, I started making my decorations.  I had no idea what the colours were, as hubby was in charge of finding out for me.  So I found out the dress was champagne and that was it.  So I decided that since my cupcake stand was white and silver, I would do champagne and silver.  I also wanted to give it a sort of spring look, so flowers and butterflies were what I figured.

My cheap flower former.

  Now if you remember I stated I had to try and curb my spending, but this was for my mother in law, which totally gave me the ability to justify a few things.  So I got a set of fondant butterfly cutters, and a pasta rolling machine.  I have been wanting one for a while, but did not want to spend the money.  They are perfect for rolling out fondant fast and nice and thin.  Also they were super cheap at the bakers warehouse.

  Funny side note, the lady at the bakers warehouse was all, "We don't sell pasta stuff here, why do we have this?"  And I explained how it was great for sugar paste and such.  Then she was all "Well we sell cannoli forms and pizza wheels too, that makes no sense!" And when I tried to explain that the forms were for the pastry version of a cannoli and the pizza wheel made cutting dough and fondant easy she nearly lost her mind.  Or she just gave me the "you are just talking crazy now" look.  Which sort of annoys me, I wish the people that worked at the store knew about their product, and they are not new.  So just saying, sometimes going into a store will not get you answers. At least they are nice, that counts for something right?

I put them all on a cookie sheet so I could move them around easier.

I made the butterflies thicker, because I learn from my mistakes.  Sometimes.

This worked great, until someone, Hubby, moved it and a bunch fell off.  But that was okay as they dried really fast. I tried to make a few larger ones with a folded bit of parchment, it worked okay.

 Anyway back to the baking stuff. I started by mixing my fondant half and half with gum paste.  I do this because I read on a great blog, Sweetopia that she did it as it makes for a stiffer decoration, without being too hard.  So after I mixed it all I rolled it out with my pasta roller and cut out the flowers.  I wanted them to be a little curved,so I put them in paint trays.  You can buy the real flower ones that Wilton makes, for a lot or do what I did and get the cheap ones in the artist isle.  Now not 100% sure they are perfectly food safe, but I put icing sugar in them so the flowers hardly touched them.  And a lot of people don't even eat them.  Then you leave them to dry over night.  I then cut out my butter flies and draped them over the side of a cake pan.   I wanted them to look like they were flying.

If I had been smart I would have kept the flowers and butterflies in different containers.  As it was I had to pick them all out, and think about how dumb I was.  I think that a lot some days.

  Once they had totally dried out I wanted to dust them with silver luster dust.  But doing it dry was not giving much of a shine, so I resorted to doing it wet.  I took some vodka,just a little.  And I added the dust and stirred it with a paint brush, then painted the decorations.  This worked great but uses a good deal of the luster dust, so be aware.

So this was the set up, until I found I did not like how little the luster dust showed on the flowers.

  Once they were dry I mixed up some icing sugar and water and piped tiny dots on the flowers and stuck a silver pearl in each one.  Looking back I should have coloured it with some grey colour as the white stood out. Oh well, live and learn.

Booze to the rescue!

See they look like they were spray painted.  Which I just now realized would have been way easier as I bought a stupid can of the silver stuff at Micheal's, by Duff I think.  Sigh, this post is depressing me at how many things I did wrong, or you know, the hard way.

I was covered!

See how cute?

And an almost in focus shot.  Almost.

  So for the cupcakes I made the red velvet with the great recipe I found on  line.  I didn't really read it before I started and was shocked when it turned out there was no butter, only oil in it.  I also got a little worried as it was so watery and I thought I had screwed up.  I hadn't, that is just how it was.  I found putting the batter in a squeeze bottle was the easiest way to get the cupcake liners filled without a mess.  I used these silver liners, that were a total pain to pull apart,but were so nice and sturdy and did not get oily or soft.  So as much as I hated pulling them apart, I will so buy them again.  And I think I paid about $10 for 500 of them, good deal if you ask me.

I got these amazing liners at the warehouse, I love that place.

As my post is super long, I will just link the recipes here. There is also a link to the post with the vanilla cupcakes and the butter cream I make.

Red Velvet Cupcakes by My Baking Addiction 

Vanilla Cupcakes From Sugarlicious, my older post

 So once my cupcakes were baked I made my butter cream and iced them, I did about 10 at a time and them stuck a flower or butterfly on them.  Then as I did not make enough decorations I put silver pearls on the rest, making sure to do them as soon as I had piped them, or else the butter cream would start to crust and they would not stick.  Then they were packed up and we went to the wedding.

These are the red velvet and they were really tasty.

 I was also surprised as Pork Chop ate about 6 cupcakes as I was decorating them.  They were mini ones, but he ate them, and most of them with frosting.  He only ate two at the wedding, but begged me to make more when we got up the next day.  As we are tearing the house apart for a garage sale I had to promise to make them again that week.  He would not stop talking about the red velvet ones all weekend.  So that was weird.  And the little bugger found the one little one I had hidden for me to eat later, so he ate it.  Good thing he is cute or I would kill him!

And if you still don't know why I am not happy with the piping, thank you for being so mature.  If you do see the reason, thank you for letting me not be the only 12 year old boy here.

  So that is wedding one down.  We have one in June, and then two in September.  I am making stuff for the two in the fall, so those will be fun!

  And the wedding was insane, lots of stuff to do, but at the end of it all my mother in law found her true love and he cried when he tried to tell her how much he loved her.

 What more can a girl ask for?

Cupcakes for Pork Chop's Hockey Team With Edible Image Cupcake Toppers

Go Hawks!

Before I get started I am also guest posting today at Whisked Together!

 Oh man has it been busy around here lately!  I have been working and trying to do some charity stuff, bake, talk to hubby and try to not kill Pork Chop.  It has been crazy.  I will update you with some of the fun, we were in a parade and I made some fun treats and I have gotten a few things done for my steam punk outfit, so all in all, lots to talk about.

  So this weekend that just past Pork Chop had his hockey banquet, which is not as fancy as you would think.  When I heard about it I figured I better make something, as I send stuff to the team for no reason at all, and now there was a reason.  I also had no time, I mean I was so not going to make fancy stuff, so cupcakes it was!

  Firstly, just so you know, I made box mix cupcakes.  I am not ashamed, when you are not a morning person, even though you start work at 7am every day, you do what you have to.  So I made a box mix of chocolate cupcakes, and then homemade butter cream and some fancy edible image toppers.

  So, I won't explain the cupcakes,  basically I cracked some eggs, mixed some stuff and baked it. All good.  Although, I was not prepared and I only had Halloween cupcake liners, they still looked good.

This is one full sheet of icing, unlike my child I don't eat the left over bits.

  So to make my cupcake topper I got Hubby to print out a bunch of the team logos, I found them on google of course.  Then I scanned them and printed them out on my edible printer.  I did two pages and that was plenty.

This is the super cool fondant cutter I got from Wilton.  I got it at Michael s just before Christmas, we were there looking for craft gifts for Pork Chop.  We didn't find anything so I had to use my coupon, you cannot waste those.

  I am sure you could just put the images on the cupcakes but that might not be as easy as this.  I made the toppers a few days before so they would dry out.  I took pre made fondant and mixed some gum paste into it.   It makes for a harder product when dry.  So I used my new Wilton fondant cutter, it looks just like a paper cutter, just cooler.  I cut the pictures out into strips then rolled out some fondant onto the plastic plate.  Then I brushed some water onto the fondant and smoothed on a strip of logos.

I found it nice to roll out the fondant on the cutting plate, it is removable. 

  Once they were on I used the cutter to cut them all out, and then put them on a lined cookie sheet to fully dry out.  I then rolled the fondant back up and rolled it back out and did it over again until all the logos were done.  I left them to dry for a few days.

They just need to dry for a day or so on a flat surface.

  When I give out cupcakes I like to use boxes, but they can get costly.  As it is I pay for them at the warehouse and it comes out to about 74 cents each with the insert, so I don't do this often.  Anyway, I always fold them and put them all together first, it doesn't take too long.  But if you do it as you are putting the cupcakes in you can get icing on them and you know make them messy.

All my pre folded boxes, those are the inserts on the bottom right.

For the icing I just made a simple butter cream.

Butter Cream
I just usually toss stuff in a bowl:

-1 cup butter
-2 TBSP vanilla *
-milk and icing sugar as needed

Cream the butter and add the vanilla, then add some milk.  Add some icing sugar and alternate between the two until you get it as thick and as much as you need.

*when I make butter cream that is going to be all white I use vanilla bean paste, it looks cool

My swirly cupcakes.

  I tinted the icing yellow and put a nice swirl on with a large fluted tip.  I like lots of icing.  Icing makes everything better.

Just press the topper into the icing.

And then all I did was put the logo topper on, it sticks right to the icing.

And you have a fleet of cupcakes to wow the 7 year old hockey players in your life.

I had Pork Chop put them out at the table for his friends, but he got so excited he flipped one.  So I got mad and told him to stop if he could not be careful.  Then I felt bad, because it's just a cupcake.  So he put the rest out, and he actually took one home.  He never does that.  Although he has not looked at it since, at least it's there.