Order Up: Congratulations on your Graduation, Sarah!!!

The order:

1 Dozen Reese's Love

1 Dozen Oreo Oh

1 Dozen Vanilla with vanilla buttercream

1 Dozen Chocolate with vanilla buttercream

Graduation season is upon us! My cousin Lori contacted us a few weeks ago asking if we could make cupcakes for Sarah's graduation party.  Every year they host a kick-ass 3rd of July party - complete with an entire pig roast and fireworks!  

Into the kitchen we went for baking!  First up were the vanilla, then the chocolate...while they cooled, the frostings were made and ready!  One thing Lori requested was having the plain cupcakes in the shape of a graduation cap!  How cool of an idea! (Post delivery lesson learned, secure the cupcakes to the board (Duh, Kel!) They did manage to shift a little during the ride for delivery!)

Boxed up and ready to go!  

Congratulations, Sarah and best wishes for all of your endeavors in the future - I know you'll be successful in whatever you do!

Order Up: Congratulations Graduates!

The order:

5 dozen vanilla with vanilla buttercream 

4 dozen chocolate with chocolate buttercream

A few weeks ago, Isis contacted me and wanted to know if I'd be interested in making cupcakes for the NY school district.  Ummm of course! She let me know that her new school was having a graduation celebration and they wanted to give each graduate a cupcake! How adorable! 

Since it was NY, they needed to be made and packaged up the day before so Isis could come down and pick them up - no problem for us! 

Into the kitchen we went! I wish I could say this was an easy order...but the first batch of chocolate I forgot the baking soda and they turned out like brownies...so onto another batch.  In the meantime, the icing was made and the rest of the cupcakes baked. 

When that was done it was time to place each cupcake in its own cup for safe wrapping! 

From there, each was frosted and topped with silver sprinkles. 

 Once that was done, it was time to bag, ribbon and box them up for the trip to NY! 

Congratulations and we hope you enjoyed kiddos! 

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!

Order Up: Brendan's Graduation!

The Order:

1 Dozen basic chocolate

1 Dozen basic vanilla

Again, another order for Erin. She's the best :)

When talking about Ava's cupcakes, she also mentioned that she would need cupcakes for Brendan's graduation. No problemo...but left me wondering - "OMG I remember when I first met Erin and Brendan was still using a bottle and in diapers - CHRIST I feel old!" Once I got past the shock of that it was onto the designs and baking!

As we talked, it was discussed that they are considered "ducks"...which is awesome because I found the perfect little cucpake toppers - little yellow duckies and little graduation duckies! So again, into the kitchen we went!

Since these were pretty simple, I used yellow and orange cupcake wrappers, frosted with white icing and some yellow sprinkles, then the little ducks went on top!

There was a little drama as I was getting ready to leave, I realized I couldn't find my extra roll of polka dot ribbon to wrap around, so I added pretty ribbon that I had around the house. Also, one tray of cupcakes almost took a turn for the worst...as I was carrying them to the table, they almost slipped right out of my hand - MAN DOWN - but I was able to save it, touch some of them up and add more sprinkles and get them out the door! So glad it wasn't a huge disaster.

Brendan, hope you had a 'quacking' good time at graduation!

Erin, hope you didn't cry too much!