Cibo e Famiglia (Food and Family): Cupcake Wedding Cake

Honored was the word when I was asked to make Michael and Lauren's Cupcake Wedding Cake for their wedding this past Saturday. The only small problem was that I am not a baker and had never made one before. But nevertheless, I moved forward and prepared by looking at the thousand's of cupcake wedding cakes out on the internet. Never having seen one before, I focused on how the stand would look and then focused on the flavors. The couple chose chocolate, red velvet and carrot cake cupcakes and I would use buttercream frosting for the chocolate and a traditional cream cheese frosting on the red velvet and carrot cake flavors.

My next step was how it would look as I felt the visual appeal was just as important as the taste. I wanted Michael and Lauren to love it when they walked into the room. Lauren's color of the day was purple so the decision was to have purple liners for all flavors and add something to the top of each to make it easier to determine what was inside. On the chocolate, I placed one small chocolate bit, red sprinkes went on the red velvet with crushed biscotti (yes, homemade) and brown sugar on the carrot cake. I really struggled with the topping and Janette helped me see the light. This way, it didn't take away from the look of the cake as a whole.

The plan was to make the 250 cupcakes on Friday and frost them on Saturday morning and it was definitely a family affair. Janette came on Thursday and we put the stand together with white satin and purple ribbon around the edge of each layer. I say we, but she did most of the work. Stacy came Friday afternoon and helped with getting them baked and putting the boxes together as we needed thirteen to hold them. Saturday was somewhat stressfull as I kept watching the clock while frosting all 250 cupcakes. Jim was on sprinkle duty and helped finalize the project. Oh yes, both Jim and his brother Tom were the taste testers. They had a tough job but were willing to help the cause.

Janette and I had to miss the ceremony in order to create the cake at the hall. It was so large, we actually needed a bigger table to hold the stand! It went together easy enough without too much stress. The only issue was that after we had it complete and stepped back to admire what was accomplished, we noticed that it was not centered on the table! Janette said no, it would not be moved...

As you can see, the guests loved the idea along with the variety and taste of our cupcakes. Yes, we used real butter and cream cheese in our frosting and made each one with love.