Catching Up: Holiday Cupcakes, Lightning McQueen and 1 Huge Cupcake

After the holiday rush I have finally recovered enough to want to write about them.

First, I made four trays of mini cupcakes for a meet-and-greet at work. The reaction was better than I expected and several people placed orders, which was so wonderful and exciting!

Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Icing
Orange with Orange Buttercream
Pumpkin with Cream Cheese Icing
Devil's Food with Chocolate Fudge Icing

For my nephew Evan's first birthday I made him a Cars cake featuring Lightning McQueen. I made the car out of pound cake and the base cake is french vanilla with buttercream and marshmallow fondant. I bought red fondant since it's hard to get red-red from home dye. I made the car details out of fondant using food color markers and allowed them to dry. You can't see it in this picture but his number 95 is also on the top of the car. The "mud" is chocolate buttercream icing and the tires are chocolate cake. I had a cold and it wasn't exactly smooth sailing but everyone loved it. Oh, and the cake tasted good too ;)

A BIG THANK YOU  TO MY SISTER TAZIA FOR ALL HER HELP!

Then the holiday rush was upon me and it was cupcake boxes with those same four varieties. I lost count of how many boxes I made but it was A LOT, I felt like a bakery. They got positive reviews from everyone, even people who don't like cake - those are my favorite.

Oh, and I couldn't forget the giant cupcake for my friend Phuong. She's another of the "I don't like cake" converts. The orange cake with orange buttercream suited her tastes since it was fruit based and not too sweet.

The giant cupcake pan wasn't easy to work with, mine was all silicone resting on a cookie sheet. The first time it didn't cook all the way through. I went and bought two heating cores and used them the second time to get the centers to cook more evenly. The cores made it tip a bit and spilled all over my oven. Icing it wasn't a piece of cake either. I know, stupid pun, I couldn't help myself. I tried to make the bottom look like a cupcake wrapper, but it was hard to make the cream cheese frosting stand upright because it is very soft. Some lessons learned so hopefully next time it will go smoother, but it turned out well.

Thank you for all my friends, family and coworkers for your support!
Have a sweet day!