Thursday, April 2, 2009

Bridal Shower Cupcakes

One of my best friends, Jackie, is getting married on June 14th. Yay! I, her matron of honor, along with the other maid of honor and the rest of the bridesmaids threw her a bridal shower this past weekend. It was such a blast and Jackie received so many wonderful gifts, including a lovely mouthful of bunny marshmallows from yours truly. Here is a picture of the ladies who helped plan the shower and Kate Mac.


We set out with the goal to make this shower as Jackie-friendly as possible, so we went with a theme that would be sure to please our lovely red-headed gal. As the invitation (also made by yours truly) promised, we were successful in showering Jackie with love, laughter, and the luck of the Irish--hence all the green in our attire. As coincidence would have it, even Jackie showed up wearing a green dress!

(here she is with her groom-to-be)

Green is Jackie's absolute favorite color and also one of her wedding colors, albeit a slightly less bold version of the color we are all wearing. Another one of the shower related jobs that I bestowed upon myself was to make the cupcakes. Obviously I went with Lemonade cupcakes as it is well known that Jackie loves lemony goodness almost as much as she loves the color green.

I began by making the stand that would hold these cupcakes. I purchased a plain cardboard stand, spray painted it bright yellow (her other wedding color), and outfitted the edges in green ribbon with white polka dots.

I also made a "cupcake topper" for the center cupcake on the display. I bought wooden letters--a "J" for Jackie, a "T" for Tim, her fiance, and a heart for love, obviously. I attached toothpicks to the letters and covered them in light green and gold glitter.


So, here is the recipe I used and then I will show how it looked once it was assembled. Oh, and by the way, I tripled this recipe because I needed to make 6 dozen cupcakes, but as it is printed, the recipe will yield 24 cupcakes.

Ingredients:

1 (6 ounce) can frozen lemonade concentrate, thawed
1 box white cake mix
1 (8 ounce) container of sour cream
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
3 eggs


Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Remove 2 tablespoons lemonade concentrate from each can and dispose of the rest.
3. Combine remaining concentrate (2 tablespoons), cake mix, sour cream, cream cheese, and eggs.



4. Beat with mixer until well blended.
5. Fill paper muffin cups about 3/4 of the way full.
6. Into the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.



7. Allow to cool completely before frosting.

(just try to ignore the bottles of scotch in the background, haha)

I used this recipe for Vanilla Buttercream Frosting to ice these.


Here are some pictures of the whole thing put together:






I must day that I was (and am) pretty darn proud of myself. I received many compliments on how delicious the cupcakes were and one lady even offered to buy my cupcake stand from me. I just let her have it--the stand that is, not a piece of my mind. All in all it was a good, long hard days work all of which was well worth it to see the surprise on my Jackie's face and the tears in her eyes...and no one deserves it more. I love that girl!

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