It’s Raining Cupcakes – Part 2

Now, for Part 2 of this tale. After I had committed to the bridal shower order discussed in Part 1, I volunteered to make the cake for my cousin’s baby shower. I did NOT have the sense to ask WHEN the shower was being held before I volunteered my services (not that it would have mattered because I probably would have done it anyway, but aaaannyway). Turns out, the bridal shower was on Friday and the baby shower was the following Saturday AND that there were going to be around FIFTY people there! This meant that I had to bake the following all in one week: 2 giant cupcakes, 64 regular cupcakes, 2 star cakes, and 30 + cake pops. I’m proud that I managed to get it all done in four days and without a total breakdown, too. Who needs sleep, right!?!

I had been wanting to make this particular giant cupcake for quite a while, but had no excuse to do it. Instead of trying to explain exactly what it was that I had in mind, I’ll just show you a picture. Trust me, it is much easier this way!

The lighting was very dim in the church, so I didn’t get the best picture of the cake. It was a chocolate cake. I used a big basket weave tip to make the bottom part look like a wooden washtub. If I had more time (and more frosting) I would have added a few more accents, like the iron bands, etc. to make it look more realistic. I dirty iced the top of the cupcake with white icing and then slopped on a bunch of the sparkly blue piping gel that Wilton makes. Next, I plopped on a bunch of marshmallows to look like bubbles and then topped it off with a patriotic rubber ducky. I was so excited when I ran across those star marshmallows and I think they worked out really nicely. The little red stars were added at the last minute and were made from cherry slices. I rolled them flat, re-sugared them, and cut them out with a teeny star fondant cutter. I also used the piping gel on the bottom of the cake board and dressed it up with more marshmallows.

Now, if you hadn’t figured it out yet, the theme for the shower was Red, White, and Blue. I decided to bake a star cake and use pillars to suspend the giant cupcake above the star cake. I also wanted to make the star cake had a tie-dyed effect. The first cake was kind of a flop. I used the Better Crocker gel food colors and the blue really wasn’t all that blue. Also, I had just spooned the different colors into the pan and when it baked, there were huge cracks from where the different colors didn’t fuse together. I’m not sure if it was from air being present or maybe it was because of the spray I used to coat the pan getting between the colors. Who knows, but it wasn’t the best looking cake and I decided that I really had to redo it. Here’s the end result for the first star cake. I hadn’t planned on using it at all, but I had some chocolate frosting left over so I figured, what the heck! You can see some of the non-blueness of the blue part in the picture.

The second try for this star cake turned out way better than I had hoped. Since I wanted to avoid the cracks again, I used a different method for tie-dying the cake. I mixed up the batter, divided it into even potions, then dyed one blue and one red. I used the Wilton food coloring gel this time and had much better colors. I then dumped everything back into the original bowl and folded it a few time to slightly mix the batter up. Then, I carefully poured it all into the pan. This was how it turned out. VERY tie-dye, I think.

And here’s what the inside looked like.

I think this method has way more of a tie-dye look than just spooning it into the pan separately.

I wanted to try out using the frosting plug technique that SeriousCakes demonstrated recently in one of her many fabulous videos on YouTube. Check that video and many other out here. I am incapable of filling a piping bag with more than one color and having it come out correctly. This frosting plug thing was a dream come true. I was able to use red, white, and blue icing all at once without it blending together. You’ll be able to see it a little better on the regular cupcakes.

I wanted to keep with the red, white, and blue theme for the cupcakes, too. I opted to make red velvet cupcakes since I was already making some for the bridal shower. I also made blue velvet cupcakes. I used a from-scratch recipe for red velvet and instead of adding red food coloring, I added royal blue food coloring. The cupcakes came out a really awesome color of dark blue. They were all decorated with the left over icing I had from when I did the star cake. Some had more blue, some more red, and some more white, but the design was the same.

Okay, so after having slaved away at the oven all week and flaring up my carpal tunnel with all the piping, I finally had everything finished. I was so excited to get all this stuff set up at the baby shower. This is how it all turned out…

Here are a few more pictures…