Becca does decorations, and holidays

The Team were invited to a friend's birthday party, and I was asked to make the party cupcakes.  All very thrilling, and right up our street... But we were going on a late holiday this year, in the October school holidays, to Australia (yes indeed, you read that right!  Australia!!  For the first time in over a decade, and thus with the children.  For nearly 40 hours door-to-door) and were leaving the day of the party.  So not only could we not attend, I couldn't make the fresh cupcakes.

So the mother had an inspired idea - could I make the decorations, and she'd make buy some cupcakes from the supermarket?  Sure thing I said...  Butterflies, flowers, birds and buttons - Happy 6th birthday E!!

One Direction, every little girls dream

It was that time of year again, D's birthday, and this year she was planning a One Direction themed party. They had so enjoyed the little lilac mini cupcakes from last year that that was the go-to idea for this year.  I started out with the little named decorations and let them dry out overnight.  Then made up dozens of mini cupcakes, all named and some even with the party-guests names on!  Then once they were decorated they were lined up and ready to be eaten.

Happy birthday D - hope it was fabulous!!

 

Say Happy Birthday with purple roses

This lady loves purple.  She asked for light and dark purple roses on mini cupcakes to be the centerpiece of her birthday celebrations.  I had made sugarpaste roses before, but only once or twice, so confidently said, sure thing, I can do that!
Then spent far longer than anticipated on getting them good enough.

I used vanilla bean paste this time, rather than the usual extract, so there were tiny little dots throughout the sponge and icing.  Lovely taste, will try this variation again soon. 

They went down a storm at the birthday lunch I believe, and her children took the leftvoers in to school the next day in their packed lunches.  And every other child wanted to trade snacks, yey!!

Mini cupcakes for little princesses...

Now that I work whilst The Team are at school/work, it's a bit trickier to organise my time for baking and other fun stuff.  And for more dull stuff, like making packed lunches and getting the kids to after-school activities on time and the like, sigh...  I guess this part is a work in progress, as I hone my time management skills in a new way - that's a positive way to look at things  :)

So for the big batch of mini cupcakes I needed for tomorrow lunchtime, I started on the sugarpaste decorations on Thursday night.  I had spoken to the parents of most the young girls in question, to find out their favourite colours as I had a plan to name and decorate cupcakes in matching colours.  

 

And you can see that The Team got their names in there too, in their favourite colours of green (Mini-1) and pink (Mini-2).  And no, before you ask, I don't have those tiny cute stamps in numbers, despite trying to locate some.

I got the cupcakes baked tonight, and am pleased that nearly all of them turned out well.  But oh boy, I made way too many decorations!  I had bought some cute Disney Princess and Disney Monsters University topper discs too, and didn't have enough cupcakes to use them all - oops.  I'm sure the girls will all be a) super excited to see so many mini cupcakes just for them, and b) to see their names in their favourite colours on said cupcakes.  Roll on tomorrow!

The girls range in age from 2 to 9, they'll all like Disney Princesses, right?

 I mean, who doesn't?

Aww, I just think they're so cute!  Hope the girls do too...