25th Wedding Anniversary Cupcakes

In August, I made cupcakes for my brother-in-law's parent's 25th wedding anniversary. What a mouth full. It was my sister who suggested to her sister-in-law that I make the cupcakes. My work was voluntary, but the supplies were paid for. At this point I had only used fondant once, but for some reason, I was confident I could do it. As you can see in the photos, I actual pulled it off rather well for someone with nearly no experience. Not without any snags, however. Let's just say... I'd like to forget, or at least, re-do that day.

Vanilla cupcakes, with cinnamon-vanilla buttercream filling, and fondant toppers.

It was certainly a learning experience, but I thought I was in a hell of a hole that I wasn't getting out of. If i remember correctly, I was supposed to make 100 cupcakes, and one small 6 inch cake. In theory I would have had everything done by 5:00pm so I could deliver them around the corner by 5:30pm. In reality, I had maybe 60-70 cupcakes, no 6 inch cake, and I was frantically loading cupcakes into my car at about 6:15pm. I'm glad my boyfriend wasn't home to see the nervous breakdown I was having.

Let's rewind to earlier that day...

Since I needed them done by 5pm, I figured I would start baking at noon, and certainly have them baked and decorated on time. I had just been laid off from my job, so I had plenty of time on previous days to make the silver fondant toppers. All I needed to do was bake, frost, place white fondant circles on the cupcakes, and then stick on the toppers and edible pearls. Piece of cake, right? Heck, the cake itself only needed fondant and perhaps a few little details, as it was requested that I just keep it simple. Boy was I so so wrong... Everything appeared to be going well, and then I realized it really wasn't going quickly enough. Needless to say, the cake took longer to bake than it should have, once it was done it was already after 5, I had run out of frosting and ingredients for frosting, the white fondant circles weren't a perfect fit and were taking longer than expected... I wound up with maybe 30 cupcakes that looked just about perfect. The rest, however, I slapped together in literally 5 minutes or so. I took that circle cookie cutter and made circles as quickly as possible, slapped them on those cuppie cakes, and stuck a topper on each one in seconds. I ran out of the apartment with one box at a time, looking like hell, up and down the stairs.... I had made my own cake stand, and even it broke when I bumped it into the car. I ran and grabbed my hot glue gun, and zoomed out of the parking lot, away from what appeared to be, my tornado stricken apartment.

I was frantically calling my sister because I didn't even know for sure where the damn place was, but she never answered. Luckily I guessed at the location and was right. My heart was in the bottom of my tummy when I had to tell my bro-in-law's sister that I hadn't made the cake. Fortunately the cake topper she bought just fit within the width of a cupcake. Her parents may not have had a cake to cut, but at least she hadn't wasted money on that "25" cake topper. Even more fortunate was that there were enough cupcakes to more than fill the four tier cupcake stand, so it didn't look like I had made much fewer than expected. I managed to get everything set up on time (well... before the couple had arrived), and placed the best looking cupcakes in the front. I heard later from my sister that people loved the cupcakes, and there were even extras to take home. Thank God there were MORE than enough.

Although it was a TERRIBLE experience, I did learn a valuable lesson. Never again will I try to bake and decorate an order that large, all in the same day.

I'm including the recipe I used for the frosting. It's actually a vanilla buttercream recipe, and I added ground cinnamon to taste. However, it did have a salty aftertaste before the cinnamon was added. I tried it without salt and it just tasted funny. With the cinnamon, however, it is delicious. I think it's a good cinnamon frosting that isn't too sweet, but probably won't use it as a plain vanilla buttercream.

Not so Sweet Cinnamon-Vanilla Buttercream

Makes about 2 cups

4 oz unsalted butter

2 1/2 cups powdered sugar (10 oz.)

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 tbsp plus 1 tsp whole milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice

ground cinnamon to taste (I used a lot)

Cream the butter and salt until light and fluffy. Add half the powdered sugar and milk and beat until well combined. Add the rest of the powdered sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla, beat again until well combined and fluffy. I usually add the cinnamon at the end so I can just mix, taste, mix, taste.