CMYK Mimeo Cupcakes

This week I was given a fun task by my work, so make some cakes for the launch UK Docs for Mimeo for all of the staff. Me and another lady were asked, I guess we're known for making the most cake! They needed to feed about 140 people, we decided on a big slab cake to feed 60 (which was nearly all eaten before I thought of getting a picture) and cupcakes, we reckoned on doing 70 cupcakes but threw in an extra ten in the end.

The obvious choice was to go for the Mimeo logo which feature CMYK, meaning the print colours Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black). I was a bit worried about how strong the colours would turn out as if they're representing print colours then I wanted them to be perfect.

Black icing can be a bit harsh so we had the great idea of using black muffin cases. I divided the cupcakes in three and do one batch of cyan, magenta and yellow. I got the cases from my local cake supply shop Sugar Daddy's in St Neots, it's like a treasure trove I love it. I also managed to pick up an Ice Blue Sugarflair paste for the cyan and some icing whitener which I thought could help the magenta brighten up.

For the sponge I made the Vanilla Cupcakes recipe from Hummingbird Bakery's Cake Days book, which is now my new standard cupcake recipe. I made the cyan batch of icing first, it took more colouring than I imagined as blue normally colours up extremely strong and always seems to develop after mixed so I'm really happy with how vibrant they turned out.  The yellow was easy, coloured with Melon sugarflair paste.

I left magenta for last as I find getting really bright pink colouring difficult. I used some of the icing whitener first which is really strange. You add some powder to a small amount of water so it turns into a paint like substance and add it in a bit at a time. I wasn't brave enough to make it completely white but it definitely lightened it a lot. I'd seen some liquid colouring in Tesco made by Silver Spoon. It's thicker than the normal liquid ones so I had more faith looking at the colour chart on the box that it would work better. It definitely worked better than the other pink I've tried but I'm sure I was mixing it for about 20 minutes (my poor mixer) but everyone commented on how lovely and light the icing was so it did it some good! I used about a bottle and a half of this colouring in a big batch of icing and I couldn't get the colour any stronger than what you see here so don't get the Pantone chart out it will never be magenta!

I seem to be favouring the Wilton 1M Wilton rose swirl nozzle, but I think it looks so nice it'll be my first choice for a while. I set them up on my clear cupcake tower which luckily held all of them and really represented the colours of Mimeo.  The cupcakes didn't last more than a couple of hours and I got some really nice comments on how light and tasty they were and that's all you can ask for really.
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Butterfly Wedding Cupcakes

So this week I had my first wedding order, it's been in the works for a while and I can't believe it came around so quick. I've never done anything on this scale so it was certainly a challenge.

The theme was simple, pink and butterflies. A theme I'm really familiar with so I was actually really looking forward to it. I'm going to post a lot of pictures so beware!

They wanted 150 cupcakes and a giant cupcake for a top tier which I think is a great idea, I've seen it a few times and always thought it looked really cute, cupcake heaven!

The cases were a big part of the order and loved these paper wrappers and originally wanted them in black, pink and white, but bright pink was impossible to find so it had to be black and white. Pink buttercream was also the first idea, but magenta turns out to be an impossible colour to make! I couldn't make it anyway. So we decided it would look nicer with plain ivory buttercream with rice paper pink butterflies. These were really good because they looked like real butterflies, had great detail and were completely edible.

To finish them off I dusted them with pink cake glitter to make them really sparkle. The cupcake tower said it could hold up to 120 cupcakes...wrong! I don't see how this would work unless they were petit fours! Luckily I had prepared for this and already had two of the silver 23 cupcake holding towers. The rest had to be scattered around the three towers which did make them look like they were cascading around.

The top tier was plain as shown, they said they were going to put a bright pink cake topper on it, but I didn't get a picture of that so you will just have to imagine. As luck would have it I had a little stand perfect for giant cupcakes that I got for Christmas from Sainsbury's which is luckily white too so it fit in perfectly.

Now I've done my first wedding I can't wait until I get another order, I can be a bit of an angry baker when I get stressed, but this didn't stress me out one bit it just flowed, so my confidence is growing too. I'm just so happy with how professional it looked.

My poor house was totally taken over by these cakes, I took a day off just to make and decorate them. The baking wasn't too bad, it was the icing! It took me hoooooooours, and I was stood at a funny angle for ages too so I felt destroyed by the end of it. I even had to extend our table just to fit them all in.

What is even more impressive is that we managed to get them all inside my mums little Peugeot 106, 150 cupcakes and one big one. All in boxes from the supermarket, cake tins and also the trays that hold Muller yoghurts in, I collected them from Tesco! Eco friendly too! And a perfect fit for cupcakes...who knew eh. Pin It Now!