Sea of Cupcakes

A friend of mine hired me to make 3.5 dozen cupcakes for her boyfriend's 30th birthday. It was a surprise for him and a great challenge for me. I found it hardest to put a price on my baking - not necessarily choosing the recipe. It is always easier to charge strangers more than your friends - why is this? Even though I could have charged a little more, I am hoping that if one or two of the people who ate my cupcakes enjoy them enough, they will want to order something too (and bring me closer to my dream).

The birthday boy ordered a carrot cake from me for Thanksgiving (after my weekend bakery-art-show) since he liked it so much, and it was apparent that I needed to include carrot cupcakes in the order. I helped my friend decide on three: chocolate with chocolate frosting, vanilla with Lemon Butter Cream Frosting, and the Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. I must confess that I was so excited the week leading up to this order that I went out an bought some interesting decorations. (If I am going to compete at all with some of the 'strictly cupcake' bakeries in town I must make them beautiful). So I bought some pearlescent dragees, silver dusting powder, and Sharffenberger Cacao Nibs. I think they will be delightful. I also polled my Go-To friend for decoration appeal of frosting - you know piped with ridges or smooth etc.

I combined some good recipes and a new one to create the final products and am really excited to see how the birthday boy liked them! It didn't take that long to bake the cupcakes, it took a while to frost them all though. I'm glad I have a few piping bags but I wish I had an additional stand mixer! For the Vanilla cupcakes I frosted them with a round tip so the frosting came out smooth and decorated these with the pearly dragees. I frosted the Chocolate cupcakes using a star tip and added the cacao nibs (nice added crunch). And I split the Carrot cakes in two layers to frost the middle and tops. The Carrot cupcakes took the most time but turned out well. The process served as a good learning experience for me and I'm ready to tackle another large order. I've included some pictures of the final products for your viewing pleasure. Thanks Adie for thinking of me!