Mother's Day chez Becca

You're probably thinking that this post will be all about Mother's Day at our house, right?  Nope, sorry. It's about what I baked for others.  I posted some pretty pictures about a month ago to entice people to order cupcakes or a little 6" cake from us, but it didn't work. 

For me at least, I saw that many of the other bakers on Facebook with whom I'm friends (some local, many not) were fully booked, often a week or three in advance.  Others showed the photos of all their goodies boxed up and ready for either collection or delivery - but we weren't quite that lucky.  So when a new Facebook fan asked for a dozen mini Strawberry swirl cupcakes, we were happy to help.  As I started on these little beauties (here we see the batter with the strawberry swirled through)

I received a call from a woman abroad (Jersey, but saying it's International makes it even more exciting) who had been let down by the cake-maker just 2 days before Mother's Day, which was fab too.  She wanted a selection of flavours, but after I explained that generally wasn't busy enough for that to be commercially viable, we settled on a mixed dozen of Classic Chocolate (chocolate cake and chocolate buttercream) and Strawberry Swirl (swirled cake and buttercream).

I was really pleased with how well the rose swirl of piped buttercream worked on these little ones, as I had only done the ice-cream type of swirl previously.

I don't know if you can buy boxes with inserts specifically for mini cupcakes, but they travelled well like this, and the customer was happy - so that's the main thing.  And, despite ordering them for afternoon tea with a friend, she sneaked a taste and told me they were delicious - hooray!!

As for the emergency International Mother's Day order - here's how they turned out...

Here we can see the Classic Chocolate at the front, with cute little green flowers to match the 'Mum' plaque in the middle, and now we see the Strawberry Swirl ones with their coordinating darker green flowers.