10 000 Cupcakes

A few days ago was my 10 000th day on earth. I've been looking forward to this milestone for years. I think I first worked out when it was when I was at uni and was upset cos it was so many years away. But, predictably, time flew, and this year I got to celebrate!! I love baking, so I decided to have a cupcake party, because it was a great excuse to try all the cupcake designs I've been wanting to try for so many years.

The make-you-own banner my mum bought me, plus some pom poms and honeycomb balls

I spent AGES preparing for this party. I had an ideas book that I printed off cupcakes I'd seen on Pinterest and wrote notes about what I would need or how I would change it. I decided to call my party "10,000 cupcakes" as I was 10 000 days old and planned to make a massive amount of cupcakes. I was struggling with what to do for my invite, so instead of making my own I got my own version of these gorgeous invites on etsy made by ForeverYourPrints instead. Mine said "Celebrate my 10,000th day with a cupcake or eight, and I can promise you a belly ache!"

I had this party at my apartment so I had to keep the numbers down as I cant fit many. So I decided just to go with uni friends, not all my different groups, and only invite those people that I knew would enjoy it and hopefully put in the effort to attend. In the end there were 18 people including me, which I think is my apartments capacity.

I baked all the cupcakes and made all the fondant decorations for it and had a ball! The party was on the Saturday, so I started making fondant shapes on Sunday and Monday (a public holiday) after buying all the fondant I would need on the Saturday. I made a bunch of custom cupcakes for people who gave me requests. I took Thursday off work and did all my shopping for ingredients. I spent a lot. And bought a lot.

These are the decorations. Most of them I already had. I probably only spend $20 on extra bits like this

After making my fondant decorations and doing all the shopping, my friend Lucie helped me bake the cupcake cake. Then I decorated it when she left for soccer. That was Thursday night. I had an early night cos I knew the next two days would be massive.
 

These were my roses and leaves

Here I have the injured dog for my vet friend, a rat, some nipples, flowers and a few other shapes

Here are my faves. I made the Swedish Chef from The Muppets for my friend Hendo who does a very good impression; an ambulance for my paramedic friend Sweeny, and a red panda for Chris (who wasn't even invited but I'd seen a picture of a red panda cupcake online, and he loves them, so I couldn't resist).

These were the flowers for my cake. I didn't even use half of the amount I made! Oops!

In my haste and excitement I forgot to grease the pan of giant cupcake! It didnt matter, though, I just iced over it

Finished product

The giant cupcake had a honeycomb/crunchie cream centre as well. But being a cake it wasn't amazing. Too much cake, not enough rest of it. And the cake was a bit dry by the time we ate in. In fact I think I can safely say that my vanilla cake/cupcake recipe which I always use is great when fresh, but too dry after even a day, let alone almost 2. A big learning curve for me. I am going to look out for a new vanilla recipe. 
I wasnt upset that only about a quarter of this got eaten. I'd rather people enjoy their food, and the cake was sadly a bit disappointing.

Friday morning I got up at the time I normally get up for work (6.45) and got to work (on the cupcakes!). I spent about 6 or 7 hours baking, and during that time I went to the supermarket to buy more ingredients as I'd run out of icing sugar and butter. I made a bunch of different flavoured cupcakes, but I'll admit, I used a packet mix for a couple to save time. I'll write out the recipes at a later date, but what I had on offer were Vanilla, Chocolate, Lemon, Orange and Poppyseed, Beer, and Caramel flavoured cupcakes. (Recipes are here now)

Here is a picture of nearly all the cupcakes I made before I iced them. I had over 260 in total. 

You can see a post-it note down the bottom there as I had to label them all so I remembered which were which!

Luckily I have a lot of Tupperware in my house (after an amazing Tupperware party where I got $600 worth of free Tupperware) so I packaged up most of these, airtight, ready to ice the next day. I kept a handful out that I knew I could do ahead of time, like the ones covered in buttercream then fondant. I worked on those Friday night, then again, headed to bed before 9.

Next morning I woke up at 6.30 (15 mins before my alarm was due) ate breakfast and started on the icing! I didnt even bother getting out of my pjs. I made SUCH a mess making all the icing. I had a lot of cleaning up to do before the guests arrived, but it was fun. My bowls werent really big enough for the bulk size I was making so I had a fine layer of icing sugar over most of my kitchen when it came time to clean. And actually, a fine layer of icing sugar over myself too.

I didnt take any photos of MAKING the icing, so I'll just show you some photos of the end products and then my table ready for the party!

lemon cupcakes with lemon cream cheese

burger cupcakes made with vanilla cake, chocolate cake, icing and fondant

popcorn cupcakes made with dyed marshmallows

chocolate BBQ cupcakes, with gummi bears on the grill

ice cream cupcakes, made in the cone

milkshakes

I bought a cute nom nom stamp for sugar cookies and fondant

cookie monster and elmo

These were meant to have a lot of swirls and decorations done in royal icing but I ran out of time and steam

caramel cupcakes with ganache icing made into a bouquet. I stuffed the bouquet up but it still looked ok

some of the personalised cupcakes

orange poppyseed

nerds

cupcake with a mini cupcake (mini reeces peanut butter cup with frosting)

beer n bacon

My little masterpiece

I bought a heap of little cupcake boxes that hold 4 cupcakes in preparation for people to take some home too! My favourite part of the party was probably people taking a box and filling it, then I got to give them a little thank you to go with it. I was squealy with delight.

I didn't keep track of how much money I'd spent because that would take the fun out of having a party, but I am predicting it was in excess of $300. I did work out that it was about 4 kg of butter, 4 kg of icing sugar, 3 kg of caster sugar, 3 kg of self raising flour and 24ish eggs though. Plus the last of my aluminium foil, baking paper and glad wrap, and heaps of decorations and chocolate, cocoa, baking powder and bicarb, oil etc.

All these photos are before the guests even arrived! 
I wont put up photos with my guests cos I haven't asked permission from anyone, but suffice to say we all ate too much, and had some massive sugar crashes later in the evening. I reckon it was one of my favourite parties!! It had so many of my close friends there and I got to do AAAAALLLLL the baking!! 

Next post will be the recipes I used! 
Xx

(Sorry about the un-even-ness of the photos, I still havent got the hang of posting photos)