Beach Wedding Cupcakes

And the big day finally arrived! I’ve been posting my sweets over the last few weeks that I made for all of my sister Liza’s pre-wedding festivities. And now for the big one, the Wedding Cupcake Tower Extravaganza!!!

The bride and groom requested classic flavors, so I made 4 different combinations: vanilla butter cupcakes with vanilla buttercream, double chocolate cupcakes with vanilla butter cream, vanilla butter cupcakes with chocolate butter cream and double chocolate cupcakes with chocolate cupcakes. (Which I suppose could be called triple chocolate?)

Back in April I had a week off from work and not much to do, and I somehow had the forethought to do a practice run of making such a massive amount of cupcakes. Roughly 180 cupcakes. At the time, I was slightly overwhelmed, but I knew that all I needed was a game plan and some organization. By doing the test run, when it came time to bake for the actual wedding, I was calm, confident, and ready to have fun with it! I also figured out exactly how far in advance I could make the cupcakes, knowing that the day before the wedding I would be at the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. I made them on a Thursday, the wedding was two days later on a Saturday, and it turned out they still tasted fresh on the following Monday. So I knew I could make them well in advance. In addition to that, I learned a few helpful tips…

My best tips for making large quantities of baked goods in a home kitchen:

• Calculate how many batches you will need to make, and translate that to how much of each ingredient you will need
• Survey your stock of all ingredients to make sure you have enough, plus a little extra. You want to have extra in case you need to remake a batch for whatever reason.
• Pre-measure all of the dry ingredients into clearly labeled ziplock bags. I did this the night before.
• Have several mixer bowls on hand (borrow from friends if you need to) so you don’t have to do too much dish-washing between batches.
• Have several baking pans on hand (borrow!) so you don’t have to wait for the pans to cool between batches.
• Ask a sibling or friend, (or in my case, a cousin visiting from out-of-town) to hang out while you are baking to help with odds and ends and dish-washing (and to keep you entertained).

Since it was a beach wedding, I decided to decorate some of the cupcakes with candy seashells that I made with white and peach Merken’s Candy Melts and a Wilton seashell candy mold.  I also brushed the tops of these with Wilton White Pearl Dust to give them a beautiful shimmer. I think the dust really took them to the next level of elegance. I made these two days before I baked the cupcakes so they were ready to go when I was ready to frost and top the cupcakes.  The candies keep well in an airtight container for a few days. 

The recipes for the cupcakes and the buttercreams can be found here, on my Recipes page!

The large baubles are candy covered chocolates and the smaller ones are white pearl sprinkles.  

Liza ordered the cupcake tower from a website called Save on Crafts. Because we found one with a pretty border along each tier, we didn’t get crazy with cupcake wrappers. That saved me a lot of time!

My favorite picture of the cupcakes…

I'd call that a success!!