In the past few weeks, I have baked 174 cupcakes. I made 150 for a big scouting event and then two dozen for a birthday party. That’s a lot of cupcakes! And I’ve learned some valuable lessons I thought I’d share.
1. Buy a jumbo sized piping tip. You just can’t beat it for piping frosting on to cupcakes. It makes them look so fancy and it’s actually easier and faster than spreading frosting on with a knife. See how pretty:
I bought Wilton’s 1M tip from Michael’s and used it in the piping bags I already had. It looks like this:
I didn’t use a coupler or anything and it still worked great. Definitely $1.50 well spent.
2. Try adding toppers to your cupcakes for that extra something special. For the cub scout event, I made paper toppers stuck on toothpicks. Cute, easy, and it really reinforced the theme.
For the birthday party, I melted down chocolate chips carefully in the microwave, put the melted chocolate into a ziplock bag, cut a tiny hole in one corner, then piped “90” onto waxed paper. That’s right… the birthday girl was turning 90! That’s definitely something to celebrate, dontcha think?!
3. Plan a way to store and transport cupcakes. You don’t want to spend all that time making beautiful cupcakes only to have them slide off the tray and splat all over the trunk or smash into the lid of the too-small tupperware. The very best thing I’ve found for transporting and storing cupcakes? Under-the-bed plastic storage containers! I have one that fits 24 cupcakes:
and one that holds about 100:
These worked so well. They are tall enough that the frosting doesn’t get smashed and wide enough to hold a lot of cupcakes. The hard plastic protects the cupcakes and I just can’t say enough about how perfect these containers worked! I will never use anything else! Plus I just dumped the old sweaters out onto my bed, washed/sanitized/dried them, then filled them up with cupcakes. When the cupcakes were gone, I washed them again and put the old sweaters back in… so dual purpose! Yay!
What if you want to give just one cupcake to someone? Thank you, Pinterest. I tried out this solution and it worked out perfectly:
Comments & Reviews
Your frosting looks delish! I would love the buttery recipe.
I didn't follow a recipe. Eek! I know, I know. BUT… I used two sticks of butter, about 2 tsp vanilla, 1/3 – 1/2 cup (ish) good cocoa, a pinch of salt, 2 TBSP milk and enough powdered sugar to get it to the right thickness. Hopefully that helps.
Marshmallow buttercream is my go to frosting. I HATE using shortening, its so gross. I use this recipe for the frosting and it tastes sooooo good. (not my blog just giving credit where credit is due 🙂 ) http://bonappetithon.com/2010/10/13/emergency-cupcakes-and-marshmallow-buttercream-frosting/
Thanks for all the tips. The under bed box is a great idea.
What did you do so the cupcakes didn’t slid or move in the under the bed storage tote?
I didn’t do anything special… I was just careful not to tilt it during transport and I drove slowly. LOL.