The finished product!

...is all eaten and I forgot to take pictures. Rest assured, it turned out very well! I sure hope her photog got some pics of it. Man!

So, I get home from babysitting her nephews and nieces during the sealing (big mistake, I wasn't thinking clearly when I agreed to do that) and have about an hour left to frost fifty cupcakes and put a ribbon and flowers on the official cake.

My friend Mike comes over to help me slash do homework.

Well... it turns out an hour wasn't enough time.

I was kind of freaking out by the end because I didn't have enough time left to make more frosting and frost the cupcakes and stick the ribbon on (tried using cute black thumb tacks... those did NOT work!) and cut and wrap the flowers and stick them in AND get myself ready.

Mike stepped in and made some frosting all by himself AND used sugar water to stick the ribbon on (only I still didn't like how loose it was so I just piped on some frosting to make it stick when he wasn't looking--don't know why I didn't do that in the first place... because I am slow).

In the end, the cupcakes were super cute as was the cake. And trendy. So Julie.

A couple of details had to be left out... like the green piped leaves I was going to put on the strawberry lemonade cupcakes and the sprinkled cinnamon I was going to put on the spice cream cheese cupcakes.

What we had were strawberry cupcakes (although you couldn't taste it under the frosting) with lemon frosting swirled with a round wide tip. Spice cupcakes with cream cheese frosting swirled with a wide star tip. Chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate frosting drop topped with a white chocolate chip. Those were my favorite.

The cake was white-ish and not as tall as I was expecting... so the shiny black ribbon took up the bottom half. White polka dots were piped on a diagonal grid to the top. And in the middle of the top were five live green rose blooms.

As I carried the cake up to the restaurant, strangers kept staring at it and saying how cute it was. Kids, strangers don't compliment an ugly cake.

Definitely turned out to be a success, although I don't think I'll ever do it again. At least not for free.



The only glitch we had was that the cake table was set up right next to where the line was... the cupcakes were meant to be eaten along with the cake after it had been cut so there would be enough for everyone (we also thought there would be more desserts... it was actually just a few cream puffs on the buffet tables). But... the cupcakes all got eaten by people standing in line! So by the time the cake was cut, there were no more cupcakes. :-(

They were all super delicious though.

My favorite was the chocolate.... The frosting was dark so it was absolutely delicious. I also really like the cream cheese frosting on the spice cake.... If I make those strawberry cupcakes again I don't think I'll try to frost them. They're good on their own and frosting overwhelms them.

So thanks for all of your tips, and I'm glad it's over. :-)

For the strawberry cupcake recipe, go here.