Wedding Bells

This weekend marked my first ever attempt at creating cupcakes for an event - a wedding. However, the bride is also my boss. So no pressure there to try and make the cupcakes even more perfect!

Luckily, I wasn't really given a brief as such - the Bride wanted a mixture of standard and mini cupcakes and decided to stick with the simple flavours of vanilla and chocolate. The colour theme for the wedding was purple, so other than that I pretty much had free reign.

Rather than create a tower of uniform cupcakes, I wanted to bring in some different looks and textures, to create a bit of a vintage tea party feel to them. So i decided to use different piping swirls, colours for the vanilla cakes and also decorative touches. A bit unconventional if you like, which I really thought tied in to the bride's personality. The wedding itself was beautiful, and I was really pleased I could help be a part of it.

Seeing as this was the first time I was creating cakes for a large number, I had to be prepared. A really good blog post I read up on can be found here on Cupcake Bake Shop which really helped on hints and tips on baking in bulk.

I won't go into the recipes for either of the cakes, as they were just simply vanilla and chocolate, which can be easily found.

I spread the baking out over 2 days - the first I got the kitchen organised and made up the frostings, they keep well for up to a week in an airtight container. The second day I got down to the business of baking the cakes.

The cakes overall didn't take too long to bake - all in all they were completed in 6 hours. that was including an absolute baking fail where I accidentally had the oven at the wrong temperature, resulting on overflowed, sunken cakes! However, apart from this hurdle I think the whole process went really smoothly but I am under no illusion that this is due to the fact I am very lucky and have a Kitchenaid mixer, and also 2 ovens which makes things much much easier.

The most nerve wracking part of the process was transporting the cakes - I was so paranoid that the cakes would be ruined every time we went over a bump or hole in the road!

I think that overall I was pleased with how everything turned out. Unfortunately I am very very self critical and kept thinking I should have done one thing or another differently, that they could be better. The Husband soon knocked that out of me though! Speaking of the Husband, I really have to thank him for the beautiful pictures he took - think they made the cakes look better than they actually were. You can see more of his stuff on his blog.

I think the overall response to the cakes was a good one! I saw a few people taking them home with them too at the end of the night and I got a few compliments too - but of course the cakes weren't the star of the show, that accolade went to the Bride!

Creating 100+ cakes was a challenge but one I enjoyed. The fact I was given the freedom to be creative with the design was a bonus too! I felt slightly on edge throughout the ceremony and up until the point of the wedding breakfast - the Bride had no idea what the cakes were going to look like until the day, so once I had seen she was happy with them, I could kick back, relax and have a drink!

Cheers Mr & Mrs L - here's to a long, loving marriage!