First cupcake order

I've just realised how lengthy my posts are and I'll be surprised if anyone has actually read my posts. Am going to try to write less and post more pics up, after all when I follow blogs I like to look at pretty pictures more than read.

A couple of weeks ago, someone sent me a message via Facebook (yes I am a fan of it, I work out in Bendigo and need to feel in touch with people) they asked me if I could bake cupcakes for their birthday and of course, I jumped at the opportunity! I love baking cupcakes and usually I have to find a reason to bake cupcakes because in my head I fear something like this will happen: "So what's the special occasion?" "oh no occasion, I just felt like baking". "You just felt like baking cupcakes for no reason?" "Erm yeah..." "Rightio.. /pat pat" Ok I guess that hasn't really happened to me but I don't want to feel foolish and look like a crazy baker, it just always seems like I need an occasion or reason to bake. Speaking of reasons to bake, we're having a celebration party of some sort since we've completed a phase of the project, I could use that reason to bring cupcakes in next week...yes you needed to know that.

Anyhow, yes I was pretty excited about making cupcakes for my very first order! Could this be my cupcake dream coming true? Yes I'm still far off from owning my own Cupcakery but it's a little step forward.

My first cupcake order client wanted a surprise for the flavour/colour/decoration so I guess I had the opportunity to use my imagination. And just before I had to bake them, I received a belated birthday present from my wonderful friends. They got me..

This awesome cupcake book which has a Jam Donut cupcake recipe I want to try this weekend. And the cutest little silicone cake scrapers and silicone pastry brush. I hate using the pastry brushes with the hairs, if I need to use it to brush oil or butter they're always so hard to clean!


Very cute silicone cupcake moulds in star shapes, heart shapes and in pastel colours.


A cupcake apron! I love it. Baking cupcakes in style..uh huh.


So off to work I went with baking the cupcakes. Oh I also got the Crabapple Cupcake Bakery book so I decided to use their Vanilla cupcake recipe. It turned out ok, it was moist but I wasn't completely happy with the way it raised, I couldn't get the perfect dome shape. I still think that the Billy's Vanilla Vanilla cupcake recipe and method turn out the nicest.

So I made some Chocolate Vanilla Cupcakes with Cocoa Buttercream topped with Coffee Intense Lindt Chocolate shavings, white chocolate hearts that I got from the fancy deli at Chaddy and some cute heart sprinkles. I would have loved to try making chocolate ganache but I ran out of time..have definitely learnt that I need to give myself more time to make these cupcake orders.



I think the Dark Lindt Chocolate and Cadbury Flakes make these cupcakes look fancier, plus its more fun to eat if you can pick a piece of chocolate off it first. It reminds me when I've had to share an ice-cream or sundae with my brother and we would always fight for the waffle cone or cherry on top.


These are the 'special' cupcakes I made especially for the order, they took much longer to make than I expected. These are the Vanilla cupcakes (Crabapple Cupcake Bakery recipe) with Cookies & Cream filling topped with Vanilla buttercream in a pastel lavender colour with a smidge of blue. I sneakily found out from my cupcake client's boyfriend that her favourite colours were purple and blue.. and favourite flavour was vanilla so I thought I would add some personalisation to the cupcakes as a nice touch. I topped these off with the white chocolate hearts and silver & blue cachous.

When I showed my dear boyfriend this photo, his first comment was "why is there a red dot on that cupcake". Dammit it's not supposed to be there.


More cupcake pics! These ones have Tim Tams on them. I love Tim Tams but I'm so bad at stopping at just eating 1 or 2 so I hardly ever buy them. They're very addictive.


Final result.. all the cupcakes in a big purple box, ready to be picked up. It's hard to find the big boxes with the cupcake inserts and they usually cost an arm and a leg for just one use, so I find that these huge boxes from the Gift shops do just as well.


I'm starting to plan how to launch a cupcake order side-business so stay tuned! In the mean time if any of you guys want to enquire about cupcake orders, drop me an email at sherylthai [at] hotmail.com

xx Shez