Order Up: Happy Birthday Bridget!

The order:
2 dozen vanilla rainbow cupcakes
1 dozen Reese's Love

My cousin Shannon emailed me a few weeks back telling me that she was having my cousin Bridget's birthday party and she requested "Rainbow and Unicorn" cupcakes. Wow does time fly - I can't believe she is 5 years old...I still remember the thanksgiving that Shannon told us she was pregnant!

Once Shannon said the theme, I knew I wanted to do cupcakes that were frosted in colors of the rainbow! But unicorns? How would I incorporate that? AH HA - Miss Michelle B to the rescue! I emailed Michelle the theme and she came up with the most adorable cupcake toppers (which are photographed below!)

(Side note - she's our AMAZING cousin who has done all of our materials - from designing our logo, to the website, to all of our print materials. Like I said - amazing and if you haven't, like her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Sweet-Musings/193753087349285, visit the Etsy store: http://www.etsy.com/people/SweetMusingsPaperie, or follow her blog: http://michellessweetmusings.blogspot.com/)

Ok, so now down to the order. If you're on the East Coast, you'll probably understand that this week has been a crazy one for us - first an earthquake, then the hurricane warnings...yeah, thanks Mother Nature. Since the whole city was a buzz, I confirmed with Shannon on Friday night if the party was still a go - and it was.

Early to bed, early to rise! Up and at 'em early on Sunday morning. First baked were the Reese's Love - are you guys tired of hearing about them yet? They are probably our most popular, most ordered cupcake :) That makes us happy...and seeing these little bad boys all boxed up, I hope they make you happy too! These were "reserved for adults only" at the party!

Once the Reese's were baked, it was time to make the rainbow cupcakes. Since I knew I wanted the frosting to be colored, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the batter and I found my answer - make my own "funfetti" cupcakes. I took our butter vanilla cupcake recipe and added in a 1/2 cup of sprinkles (aka jimmies like you get on ice cream) and mixed them throughout - very cool. Into the oven they went.

While they were baking, I whipped up the buttercream icing and start to color them. Red is such a tough color to obtain, so that was the first that I made. Once that was done, I had some leftover red...added a dollop of white buttercream, some yellow food coloring and voila orange. Next up was yellow. Can I just say how much I love the yellow color? It's so bright and cheery. Here's the first 3 colors:

Next up was green, blue and purple to complete the rainbow. I took a scoop of buttercream into leftover vanilla and added a dab of blue. Then I took another scoop of buttercream into the bowl, added the blue. The leftover icing got the purple. I love the Spectrum food color gels - they are really true to the color and you can adjust the hues based upon more/less icing and color and they are SO easy to mix in!

Since these were going to be on display, I didn't want to put the cupcake toppers on until I got to the party, but here is a close-up of the finished toppers - how adorable are they?!?! (Again, thanks to Michelle B!)

Once they were all done and packed up, it was time to head out before Hurricane Irene headed in. I drove to the bowling alley that the party was at, got the cupcake stand up and started arranging the cupcakes. As I was putting this together, I was smiling because I was so happy at the way they turned out - the colors were perfect, the picks looked adorable, and overall it was just so colorful and girly.

Once they were setup, we called Bridget over to take a look...and the look on her face and her smile was worth it. She was like "Are they my cupcakes? They look adorable!"...it was wonderful. And how adorable does she look with them? (and so grown up might I add???)

Happy 5th Birthday Bridget - we hope this one knocked down all the pins for a strike!