Wedding Cupcakes (Part 1)

Last week, my family and I got to celebrate the marriage of my cousin Bailey. It was a gorgeous outdoor wedding with perfect weather, an all around wonderful day. What made this wedding extra exciting for me though was the fact that Lara and I were in charge of making all of the cupcakes for the reception. It all started shortly after Bailey got engaged. She approached us with the idea of making a couple different kinds of cupcakes to serve at the reception. Of course Lara and I jumped at the opportunity. The three of us often get together to do some baking and hang out, so it was fun to be able to bake for her on such a large scale on her special day. In this post and the next I'll share some pictures, thoughts, and ideas about baking cupcakes for a wedding, or any other large group.

240 of the 274 cupcakes we ended up making, waiting for the big day

Bailey decided that she wanted three different kinds of cupcakes at her wedding. Two of them we had made together previously and had loved, so it was a no brainer to use them for her wedding. In addition she wanted just a plain white cupcake too, something simple and familiar. With that all figured out the cupcake menu was as follows:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

Cherry Limeade Cupcakes

Classic White Cupcakes

It was a good mix of flavors, a little something for everybody. Bailey's wedding colors were coral and green, so the light pink frosting of the cherry limeade cupcakes and the light green we decided to color the frosting of the white cupcakes were a beautiful and fitting way to finish off the meal.

This was by far the most cupcakes I have ever made at one time. Last fall Lara and I made around 120 cupcakes for some friends, but this was over double that. Since the wedding was on Friday afternoon, we decided to bake all of the cupcakes on Thursday, and make the frosting and frost the cupcakes on Friday morning. It was a lot of baking and frosting in two days, but it all went really well. I would definitely do it in two days again if I am able. We thought about making the cupcakes ahead and freezing them, but since we had the time to do it all the day before, we thought that would be the better option. Fresh cake is always the best!

Just getting started, tons of flour, sugar, eggs 

and butter, not to mention two Kitchen Aids

Another view of all the ingredients,

it was good to have plenty of counter space

That's right, 16 pounds of butter, don't worry

 about it, just accept it!

It was very nice to have a pair of mixers, 

but the best part was having more than one

mixing bowl, that saved a ton of time

In the midst of baking

Just keep filling those muffin tins

Part way through the baking, cooling the cakes

Lots of cupcake liners

We had a few casualties, but nothing too horrible thank goodness!

For the next installment of Wedding Cupcakes, Click Here