I Survived!

Boy, did I have a CRAZY weekend full of baking!  Thankfully, everything turned out great!  11 dozen cupcakes down, 12 more to go for the week!  I have 7 dozen red velvet cupcakes (check out the recipe posted under recipe tab) to bake for Valentine's Day tomorrow, and 5 dozen left to bake for an 8 dozen order (all different flavors) for Thursday.  Thank God I made all of the cream cheese frosting ahead of time yesterday!  I feel like a cupcake machine... and now I DEFINITELY need a bigger kitchen!  So, for the weekend I made 2 dozen cupcakes for a young girl's birthday (12 chocolate and 12 strawberry) with a request of zebra print on top.  This is how they turned out:

It took me quite a while to pipe the zebra stripes on- good thing I am familiar with drawing zebra stripes or it would have taken me longer!  Note to self:  when working with a piping bag on a design that will take some time, it might be a good idea to use Crisco instead of butter next time.  The heat from my hands was literally causing the butter to melt and ooze out the top of the bag- I had to squeeze it all out back into the bowl and mix it in with the rest of the frosting!

These were the cupcakes for the baby shower and were strawberry cake & frosting (I just tinted the frosting two shades of pink):

Last but not least I had to make 5 dozen cupcakes for a wedding shower with a "Lost" (TV show) theme.  It took a little rearranging to get everything to look good, but these actually took less time than the four dozen I made the previous night:

Needless to say, I was exhausted by the end of the weekend, but it was worth it!  I am getting faster at making batters and frostings and learn every time I make a new batch.  This is a whole process of trial and error with note taking.  I expect to start having certain recipes memorized after making them so many times!  I have many more new recipes to try, but I'll save it for next weekend!  Now I need to work on getting my website and Facebook page finished...