Order Up: Congratulations Fran!

The order:

3 dozen vanilla with vanilla buttercream

3 dozen chocolate with vanilla buttercream

1 Jumbo cupcake in the shape of a softball

Decoration: Softball field layout, graduation stand, giant yellow softball

This order came to be from Steph's girlfriend Gabby. Her mom, Elyse and dad, Ralph came to a BBQ at my house and Gabby was telling them how I've just started a cupcake business. Gabby showed them some pictures of the cupcakes I made and they decided to place an order for Fran (her sister) high school graduation.

I agreed and the brainstorming began. For those who don't know - Gabby is a planner(love ya Gab), she came to my house one night with ideas of how they wanted them to look, and we took it from there. After that, I spoke with Elyse and told her the ideas - she's not so detail oriented and said "I trust you - whatever you think is good with me!"

Friday, I took off of work so that I could dedicate my time to making all of the cupcakes and not having to rush decorating. I got up early and got to work - cupcakes were going in and coming out of the oven looking delicious. Next I made the batches of icing and colored them so they were able to set.

When I finally looked up, I realized I was in the kitchen for 5 hours. Rich decided to come over and we ran out to lunch, ran into AC Moore and headed back to get to frosting.

As I was laying out the cupcakes for the template of the field, Rich (being the sports fan and hoping to make it as realistic as possible) gave some great ideas. We were able to make the field look like a softball field, align the bases and get the frosting done.

Once we were done frosting, Steph came over so we could transport the cupcakes and get them to the party. When we were packing up the car (in the torrential downpour from the skies that decided to open up), Steph was putting the softball cupcake in the car, and it decided to roll a little bit. Not to worry though, we learned our lesson and packed the extra icing.

We got to the party, everything was intact, and that's

where the Cupcake Wars started. Ralph is a bit of a "ball buster" so when I walked in, he said "You've got 2 minutes"...*Gulp*. No time to waste.

Steph setup the adorable graduation cupcake stand and started placing the cupcakes on it.

I worked on patching the smush on the big cupcake, piping the laces and adding Fran's number - she's the pitcher of course so it should hold her number! After that, the cupcakes were arranged, dirt (graham cracker crumbs) were added and placed onto the cake board. Two pennants were placed in the outfield with the logo for St. Johns, the college where Fran will be attending, and "Congratulations Fran 2011".

Needless to say, I wasn't able to do this in 2 minutes or less, but at the end there were smiles all around!

Thanks Elyse and Ralph for giving me the opportunity to make the fun cupcakes!

Congratulations Fran and best luck on all your endeavors at St. John's!