Wedding Cupakes (The Big Day)

I recently was asked to take part in a couple's special day. I was so honored to be asked to make a wedding cupcake cake. After a few weeks of planning and numerous test cupcakes, I was ready for the big day. I spent the week before the wedding making drop flowers for the tops of the cupcakes and side of the cake. Two days before the wedding, I baked a carrot cake and 120 carrot and vanilla cupcakes. On the night before the wedding, I decorated the cake and cupcakes to look like roses. On the day of the wedding, I set up the cake and cupcakes on my new Cupcake Tower, which I love and highly recommend. It was a lot of work, but I was thrilled with the way everything came out and the buzz the cake generated at the wedding. It was a hit! Congrats to Carol and Paul!

Here's a close ups of the cake and the cupcakes:

The white ones were carrot  with cream cheese icing and the purple ones were vanilla with vanilla buttercream. I decorated them with white edible pearls and purple and white flowers.

The cake was carrot with cream cheese icing.

Happy Birthday Carrot Cake

I was recently chatting with my hair stylist about the upcoming wedding cake and cupcakes I was making. I told her the flavors and she told me her husband loves carrot cake. She asked me to squeeze in a cake order for her. (What girl in her right mind would say "no" to her stylist?) I added walnut and raisins to my grandmother's carrot cake recipe and decorated it with orange roses as requested. I usually love decorating round cakes, but had problems smoothing the icing on this one. Plus I had shaky hands and was worried about my roses, which were not my best. My stylist and her husband loved the cake, which is all that matters in the end. 

Wedding Cupcakes (Round 3)

And we have a winner! After a few different cake recipes, we finally found a cupcake clear winner. The bride originally wanted yellow cupcakes and gave me two recipes that she wanted to try. I made them and wasn't pleased, so I asked her to let me make her my go-to vanilla cupcakes. These vanilla cupcakes never disappoint. They quickly won over the bride and were chosen as the clear winner. These cuties will be decorated with purple and white icing and adorned with white edible pearls and white and purple flowers like this:

Vanilla Cupcakes
Source: adapted from Annie's Eats

Ingredients:
3 cups cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 sticks butter (room temperature)
2 cups sugar
5 eggs (room temperature)
1 and 1/4 cups buttermilk (room temperature)
2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line two cupcake pans with cupcake liners.

In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside.

Beat butter on medium-high speed for 3 minutes (with either a hand mixer or stand mixer), until light and creamy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat for an additional minute.

Add the sugar to the butter mixture, 1/4 cup at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition. Beat in the eggs one, scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition.

Combine buttermilk and vanilla extract in a liquid measuring cup. Beating on low, add the flour mixture, alternating with the buttermilk, and ending with the flour mixture.

Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 full (I had enough batter for a half-dozen more cupcakes) Bake 18 - 22 minutes. Allow to cool in the pans a few minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.

My Favorite Vanilla Buttercream
2 sticks butter, room temperature
4 - 6 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
1 - 2 tablespoons water

Cream the butter. Add vanilla and water. Beat well. Add powdered sugar one cup at a time until desired consistency is reached. Beat well.

Wedding Cupcakes (Round 2)

After I made the Martha Stewart cupcakes, I whipped together a yellow cake recipe I had used as a base for these root beer float cupcakes. Instead of root beer, I substituted buttermilk. The batter was delicious, unlike the batter for these MS cupcakes. I popped them into the oven and waited. When I opened the oven, I found small mishapen cupcakes. They didn't rise very much and looked like little lumpy muffins. I tasted them and while the flavor was much better than the MS cupcakes, they were very dense and kinda dry. I don't know what happened since they came out great with the root beer, so I blame the buttermilk. I sent them along to the bride with the MS cupcakes and being the nice person she is, she said they were delicious. Again I went back to the drawing board and asked her if I could make her my go-to vanilla cupcakes, even though she wanted yellow cupcakes.

Yellow Cupcakes
Source: Betty Crocker Big Book of Cupcakes

Ingredients:
2 and 1/3 cups flour
2 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks butter (room temperature)
1 and 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 cup buttermilk

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line two cupcake tins with 24 cupcake liners.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside.

In another large bowl, beat butter for 30 seconds on medium speed. Gradually add sugar 1/4 cup at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat for two minutes and scrape down the sides of bowl as needed.

Add eggs one at a time and vanilla and beat well.

Reduce speed to low and alternately add flour mixture and buttermilk in three additions, ending with flour and mixing until just blended.

Fill the cupcake liners about 2/3 full and bake for 20 - 25 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Wedding Cupcakes (Round 1)

These cupcakes are brought to you by Martha Stewart. While I love my Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book, I really haven't had much success with her recipes. I've been working on a wedding cupcake cake and and the bride chose these buttermilk cupcakes to sample. I was a little hesitant. I followed the recipe perfectly and only substituted table salt for the coarse salt (less of it, of course). I popped them in the oven and before the timer buzzed, I smelled burning. I quickly popped them out of the oven and transferred them to a cooling rack and was thrilled that only two cupcakes burned. These cupcakes were beautiful. They were perfectly round with slight domes and a gorgeous yellow color. After they cooled and I decorated them, I tasted one. It was a little dry (possibly because it was over baked a tad) and flavorless. The flavor was very light and really didn't taste like anything. I decorated them in her colors and I gave them to the bride. While she loved the way they looked, she admitted they weren't what she wanted and we were back to square one again.

Yellow Buttermilk Cupcakes
Source: Martha Stewart's Cupcakes

Ingredients:
3 cups cake flour
1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 and 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt (I used 3/4 teaspoon regular salt.)
2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons butter (room temperature)
2 and 1/4 cups sugar
5 whole eggs (room temperature)
3 egg yolks (room temperature)
2 cups buttermilk (room temperature)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line three cupcake tins with 36 cupcake liners. Add vanilla to buttermilk and set aside.

In a bowl, whisk together flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt and set aside.

In another bowl, beat together butter and sugar with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy. Reduce speed to medium and add whole eggs and egg yolks, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. 

Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of buttermilk, and beating until combined after each.

Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full. Bake for 18 - 22 minutes, rotating tins halfway through baking.Cool completely on wire racks.

Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes

I've made these chocolate vegan cupcakes before (which by the way have become my go-to chocolate cupcakes, even beating Hershey's perfectly chocolate cake recipe). I have also made this raspberry buttercream, but I never put them together. What a great flavor combination! I also tried one of my new decorating tips and some pink sugar pearls to make these pretty little cupcakes look like crowns.

Rose Wedding Cake

I've been asked to make a very special cake: a tiered wedding cake! I've never made a tiered cake before, so I was nervous. Just as I gathered everything I would need to make a sample tiered cake, the bride threw a surprise my way. She asked me to change the tiered wedding cake into a wedding cupcake cake with a tiny cake on top. I was thrilled as I love cupcakes and was full of ideas!

I whipped up this cake as a sample for the bride and groom: carrot cake with cream cheese icing. I decorated it to look like a rose with leaves around the edges and she loved it! We're going to go with a rose theme for the cake and cupcakes and adorn them with accents of purple and white. With a few tweaks, the cake and cupcakes will be perfect, just as I hope her day is and her life with her new husband.