The Cupcake Adventure

Last October I received an email from the pastor’s assistant at my church looking for prices on cupcakes for the annual Women’s Banquet. She originally asked for a quote on 480 cupcakes (60 tables with 8 cupcakes each.) They were considering them for double duty as each table’s centerpiece and dessert. Cathy was also interested in ideas for giveaways for the banquet and asked if I could help knowing I’m a designer and baker. I follow lots of blogs and many, many crafty people in the webosphere so of course I had ideas. 😀

I submitted my suggestions and prices for everything, including cupcake bouquets (instead of having them just sit on a pedestal or something.) I really didn’t expect to get the cupcakes job since I’m not a bakery and it was a pretty big order. Cathy asked if I could send a sample of a cupcake bouquet with a dozen (instead of the original 8) cupcakes for a board meeting they would be having so I put one together for them. This is what I sent. I really wasn’t too happy with it, looked sloppy and again, thought for sure they wouldn’t be interested.
As you might have guessed, they did like it, in fact Cathy told me it was a little more than they wanted to spend but liked it so much they decided to go for it. So, my mom and I had an order for 720 cupcakes that were to be arranged into 60 cupcake bouquets.

Fast forward to last Sunday night, the Sunday before the Thursday evening banquet. I get a call from Cathy saying they sold many, many more tickets than they’d expected and asked if I could handle about 20 more bouquets. They were adding up the numbers then and she’d let me know a solid number a little later. Umm, I guess. About an hour later I got the heart-stopping call saying they needed NINETY SEVEN bouquets, plus an additional 3 dozen cupcakes loose for those who might not have gotten one at a table. YIKES!!!

My mom and I were in this one together and when I gave her the news her mind started working a mile a minute, as did mine. I picked up the extra pots, styrofoam balls, toothpicks, ribbon, ingredients and we dedicated all of Tuesday and Wednesday to baking cupcakes and making a ton of icing, not to mention adding ribbon to the pots and splitting foam balls. My sister and one of her students even came over to help. (Thank you!) We had 8 different colors of icing, to match the gems strewn around the pot so I had to calculate how much of each color we’d need. Wow was it tiring.

Thursday was showtime and we got to the venue at 10am. I thought we had until 6-ish but we only had until 3 (and then pushed it to 5.) Thankfully the church provided a ton of volunteers to help as we had to do just about everything that day which included putting toothpicks in 97 styrofoam balls, skewering the cupcakes onto the toothpicks and then icing all 1200 cupcakes. At the very beginning I told Cathy we’d need many people and there was no way we could have pulled it off without them. Even though there were several dramatic moments (like running out of icing), when all was said and done we finished every bouquet, they were lovely and we got many, many compliments.
I also baked and crafted 14 giveaways for the event. Two Cupcake Party Kits – instructions found here. I duplicated it nearly exactly. (Why mess with a good thing.) I didn’t buy the paper though, I printed my own to match the colored cupcake liners I found.

3 packages of Cheesecake Pops – To make the “giveaway” packaging I used kraft bags and cut ovals out of the front using a template plate, then put 5 pops inside and strung one on the outside for display.

3 packages of Hot Chocolate on a Stick

And 3 packages of embellished Specialty Gift Tags. Surprisingly, these were the most challenging. I wanted to print my own design and cut it out, but with a limited amount of time I ended up using a “tag pad” I found at a craft store and then embellished it with glitter, flowers and brads.
I also made 3 of these Stacked Boxed Cookies that contained pizzelles, snowballs and fairy drops.
It was a thrilling, exhausting and learning experience and it was an honor to have been a part of this special event. Big thanks to my mom who is always so organized and positive about getting things like this done and to my dad who joined and was a major asset in the prep and setup. Also thanks to my husband who basically took over my parenting responsibilities and came to my rescue with more icing tips at the venue, among other things. One more thanks – to all my clients who patiently waited (and are waiting) for me to get back to working on their designs. 😀
You all are the best!