Today was my cousin Laura's bridal shower. My aunt asked me to do cupcakes for the event, and of course I said yes! After hours of searching for ideas online, I found something that inspired me and I ran with the idea. Since this was such a huge project, I'm going to chronicle it for you here. I started by buying the hot pink foil wrappers from Etsy. Then, I searched far and wide for edible glitter and could not find any in the United States...so I ordered it from England. I spent all day Friday shopping for the perfect display. I was looking for white boxes or some boxes that I could paint white. I couldn't find ANY boxes I liked. I went to Joann's to get the perfect fabric and ended up walking around aimlessly for an hour, filling my basket with ribbon and sequins and other inspiration. Then I headed to Michaels. I spent 2 hours walking around Michaels making myself crazy over these boxes. Finally, I realized that I could use baskets to get the same look. So, after heading to several more stores, I went home to discover how to make sugar flowers.
So, on Friday night I made some gum paste and created the flowers. In total, I made 150 flowers. On Saturday morning, my mom came around 9:30 and we got started baking. I made 2 batches of chocolate and 2 batches of vanilla cake. I also made a small cake for my mom's friend who was having a birthday. Then, I made homemade fondant (thanks to a recipe from Alison over at Alicakes) and 2 huge batches of buttercream.
While I was baking, my mom spray painted the baskets. Then, she glued the 3 types of ribbon on the baskets and made the bows. She also wrapped my gifts to Laura for the shower.
I rolled out the fondant and cut 100 large circles and 40 small circles. Then I stamped "L" into the small circles and a scroll pattern into some of the big circles. My mom then took food coloring mixed with water and painted the color into the impressions. She painted edible glitter on each large circle and petal dust over each of the Ls.
While my mom was painting, I dusted the sugar flowers with petal dust and placed edible pearls in the centers of the small flowers. Then, my mom cut the tops of gumdrops to make the centers of the large sugar flowers.
I piped on buttercream to assemble the cupcakes and as I did that, my mom placed 15 edible pearls on each L cupcake with TWEEZERS! It was an incredible task. Each cupcake had so many steps.
When my cousin saw the cupcakes, she said: "Am I going to be on the blog?" Yes, Laura, you are on the blog! I hope you enjoyed your shower!!! I can't wait for the wedding! :)
These cookies were the favors...made by Laura's very talented bridesmaid, Caitlin.
