At any rate, I had spent most of the week preparing for their wedding cupcakes… and other than squeezing in some time to experiment with my 2nd batch of honeydew sago cupcakes, I’d pretty much spent most of the week doing the preperation for the wedding cupcakes.

Earlier on in the week, the printers had finally come back to me saying that the custom made boxes were ready. I eagerly grabbed a cab and rushed down to pick up the boxes. Oh.. they were so elegant, pretty and cute… and I think I did make the right decision to personalise it just that little bit by adding their names and wedding date on the box. Don’t you think the box turned out beautifully?!

Once I got the boxes, I rushed home and started folding the 180 boxes that the wedding couple had requested for… to tell the truth.. that alone required nearly 3 hours to complete… whew! Next came the cutting of the tissue to line the box. I didn’t want to make use of normal baking paper as I found they don’t look as pretty, so I made a special trip down to Bras Brasah to look for other types of paper I might be able to make use of… After spending about 3 hours there with my hubby.. as he of course had to stop at Swee Lee and look at his guitar stuff and of course make a pit stop at the bookshop to look at books, etc, etc… we finally made our way to the Art Shop. After spending another 1 hour there, I finally found some nice ivory coloured paper which I thought would go perfectly with the box and the cupcakes. Oh and guess what! While I was shopping in Bras Brasah I bumped into an old classmate of mine whom I’ve not seen for years and whom I’d lost touch with… so all in all it was a great day! Found what I needed and re-found a friend

So with the paper in hand, I began cutting it up to ensure that each piece would fit perfectly into the box. As the paper was very delicate, cutting it was quite difficult and took me nearly another 3 hours to complete… but at the end of the day, looking at the boxes which were tissue lined made it worthwhile.. now, all that the boxes required were the wedding cupcakes!

After spending a day baking the cupcakes, I spent another 8 hours together with the help of my hubby to frost and decorate the cupcakes… of course during the baking process, with the whole house infused with the smell of chocolate cupcakes, my hubby could not resist and would come in to steal a couple of cucpakes from each freshly baked batch… luckily for me I had factored this in and had ensured that I had some extra cupcakes on hand :p

My mom was also really sweet, as she took half a day off to specially come down to help as she was worried I wouldn’t be able to cope. Thanks Mom!! Well, with so many extra hands to help me, things went a lot faster than I had planned… but with all the cupcakes I had to make, the house was starting to resemble cupcake land with all the cupcakes I had to make… haha

Well… after all that hard work, the last step was to individually pack the ready baked, frosted and decorated cupcakes into their customized boxes.

This was what the end product looked like…

So after an exhausting day of work, we managed to complete everything and deliver the cupcakes to Iman and Joyce’s wedding on time…. I just hope that their guests liked it every bit as much as I enjoyed doing it…. :0)

I tried to add the sago after completing the icing, but realised that it caused the buttercream coconut icing to melt as the sago was wet.. crap! After realising this, I did the rest of the cupcakes without the sago. Hmm… back to the dilemma of how to incorporate the sago into the cupcake. Arrgghhh!!

Haha.. I think I’ll have to take  a leaf out of Chockylit and maybe add the sago in as a filling or mix the sago into the icing before piping it on the cupcakes. :p Not a total disaster… at least the cupcakes turned out pretty and tastes fantastic, with the coconut enhancing the taste of the honeydew flavour to give it that honeydew sago dessert taste

Here are the pics! What do you think?? Good enough to eat?.. *slurp*

Anyway, here’s a look at how they looked

These were made with a rich, creamy chocolate ganache frosting, and the features were done using royal icing… I thought they turned out quite nicely as I tried to make the ganache thicker

During the making of the cupcakes above, I had some extra cupcakes leftover so decided to make a very special cupcake for my very special boo…

These very special cupcakes had both oodles of ganache frosting as I decided to use up all the remaining ganache I’d left from making the face cupcakes above, and in addition, I topped it with swirls of royal icing… haha.. enough to give anyone instant diabetes.. Oh well.. my boo has a super sweet tooth, so he should enjoy it… and it’s only once in a long long while right hee…..

Iman and Joyce wanted 2 miniature wedding cupcakes to be presented to their guests as wedding favours for their wedding banquet. After having a discussion with them to find out some details on the wedding, I started my quest to look for a suitable wedding favour box that would be able to fit 2 miniature cupcakes… Unfortunately in Singapore it’s actually quite difficult to find pretty, ready made wedding boxes.

The first place I thought of to begin my search was of course Spotlight, which is located at Plaza Singapura. I love Spotlight, don’t you!! All those raw materials to be found there… bolts of beautiful clothes, pretty ribbons, boxes, cutters, scrap booking materials, templates, etc,etc…. oooo…. so many things there for you to buy!!! I go crazy everytime I head there!!!

So off I go to Spotlight where I found some beautiful chinese take-out boxes of varying sizes and colours. They even had chinese take-out boxes that were prettily decorated in Christmassy designs!!! I was sooo tempted to buy them… but as I was on a mission, and I knew that my husband would probably kill me for buying any more stuff to decorate the flat, I had to let them go…… sigh So off to the payment counter I went with only samples of the take-out boxes I hoped to use for the cupcakes.

Eagerly rushing home from Spotlight, I got home and quickly whipped up a batch of mini cupcakes and stuffed them in the oven to bake. The minute the timer went off, I took them out of the oven and hopped on foot to foot impatiently waiting for them to cool off enough for me to handle bare handed, before quickly popping the cupcakes into the chinese take-out boxes to try on for size. To my utter disappointment, the boxes Spotlight had were either too huge or too small to fit the 2 mini cupcakes!!! Aaarrggghhhh…. Next stop, Poon Huat!! I quickly went to Poon Huat located near Holland Village to search for favour boxes, unfortunately for me, the boxes were all too short to be able to house 2 mini cupcakes with frosting… what to do now?!

I resorted to doing research on the internet and going into various forums, that would hopefully yield other places where I could get boxes. However, my attempts yielded no results and had no choice but to start calling various manufacturers to see if I would have better luck there. I was getting pretty demoralised after making at least 20-30 calls for which the manufacturers declined to manufacture such a small number of boxes. I only needed about 200 but most manufacturers had a minimum manufacturing order of 1000! Other manufacturers that did agree to print 200 boxes quoted me very high prices which would no way fit within the couple’s budget.

I was just about to give up and tell Iman and Joyce that I couldn’t find any boxes, when I finally got a break and managed to contact 2 manfacturers who would be willing to print a small quantity of boxes for me, at a price that was within my couple’s budget. Yahooo!!! I quickly made an appointment to meet up with them and then started to search for examples of what I wanted the cupcake boxes to look like, bearing in mind that the box should be unique and small enough to not take up too much space on the banquet table.

After printing out examples of boxes that I liked, I brought them along to the meeting with the manufacturers. My sweet husband, who was tired and grumpy, still supported me and acted as my chauffer for the day, bringing me to the meeting and sitting there while I had my discussions with them.. Thanks sweetie!! :*

After much discussion with the manfacturers on what boxes would work and what wouldn’t I impatiently waited for their quotes to arrive. Finally settling on one supplier, I confirmed the order. As I wanted Iman and Joyce to be able to have a keepsake of the wedding favour (if not the cupcake, at least the box!) I asked the manufacturers to help make the box more personalised and unique to the wedding couple by getting them to include the couple’s name and wedding date on the box.

That settled, I then started brainstorming for cupcake flavours as well as designs for the cupcakes. As the wedding couple did not have any specific requirements, that gave me free reign on my creative juices… As the cupcakes had to suit people of all ages and had to be suitable to all palates, I thought it best to stick to standard cupcake flavours such as vanilla and chocolate where I can’t go wrong. In addition, as the cupcakes would probably be sitting out in the open in Singapore’s hot and humid weather for at least a couple of hours, while the banquet was prepared, the icing had to be royal icing as buttercream icing could easily spoil.

That decided, I baked up a batch of vanilla and chocolate mini cupcakes and decorated them in various ways before presenting them to the couple for their final decision. In the end, the final conclusion was to have miniature chocolate cupcakes with large swirls of royal icing, decorated with strawberry flakes and lastly for that romantic touch, the cupcakes would be topped with a little heart shaped sweet.

These were the samples of the cupcakes the couple decided on :O)

Don’t you think they look yummy and just so sweet Upon seeing them my hubby titled them Sweethearts. So I think, I’ll call them just that!!

Well, their wedding is this coming Sunday and I’ll have a long day of baking and frosting coming up soon… My greatest fear is that my hands will cramp up during the baking and frosting process!!! So wish me luck!!

I’ll try and post up pics of the final product in my next post for you guys to take a look.

To Iman and Joyce, I hope you guys have a beautiful wedding on Sunday!!! :O)

So we finally sat down to discuss what she wanted… and it was decided that she wanted a rich chocolate cupcake, topped with sinfully thick chocolate ganache for herself. In addition, as she had a friend’s birthday coming up, she also asked if it would be possible for me to do up a face cupcake for her.

So as soon as I got home, I quickly started brainstorming on how to do up the face cupcakes… in the end, to cut a long story short, I decided to use a chocolate cupcake base topped with decadent chocolate ganache to create the base of the cake. To create the face, I decided to use marshmallows, some icing and a little bit of creativity to create the face. Simple, fun to make and hoepfully the end result would be cute…

These were what the cupcakes turned out to look like… what do you think??

I call these cupcake faces Chocolatey Choc Madness since they are just soooo sinful… Using a dense chocolate cupcake base, I topped the cupcakes off with a decadent, and rich chocolate ganache glaze and decorated the faces using marshmallows and chocolate… Don’t you think they look so cute.. even if they do look a little nerdy..

A close up view of the cupcake faces..

These are the cupcakes my Auntie ordered… also using a chocolate base and a thick ganache glaze, I thought I’d pretty it up a little using mini marshmallows and a tiny pink flower….

Had some extra cupcake batter left over so decided to make some mini cupcakes, topped these chocolate cupcake mini’s with a big swirl of icing and a little pink flower…

Last but not least…. thought I’d try piping some pink flowers directly on to the ganache glaze.. I thought these came out looking quite pretty and it looks just like a garden in full bloom…