Cupcake-palooza

Victor and I held a benefit show at the end of August to help raise money for a friend undergoing cancer treatment. We were able to successfully raise about $3000 which was great and everyone had a great time coming together for the cause.

About two weeks before the benefit, we started to solicit food donations. At that time, we had also been watching a lot of Cupcake Wars on the Food Network. Inspired by the bakers would could turn out 1,000 cupcakes in 2 hours on the show, I volunteered to make 100 cupcakes. I actually made 120 cupcakes, but I had to trash 20 of them due to the concept just not quite coming together.....Here's what I made:

• Red velvet cakes with cream cheese icing
• Devil's food cake with peanut butter cream cheese icing
• White cake with vanilla buttercream icing and coconut
• French vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream and sprinkles
• Chocolate cakes with marshmallow filling

The chocolate cakes with marshmallow filling were the ones that we ended up having to throw away. I got the recipe off of Martha Stewart's website but something just wasn't right with the marshmallow filling....it was way too runny and wet. It was getting absorbed into the cake and then running out the sides...marshmallow disaster! Luckily, I still had 100 good cupcakes left. We sold them at $1 a piece and ended up selling 93 of them....so I felt pretty successful. That was the first time I had ever sold any of my baking! The pictures above were all of the cupcakes boxed up right before we left for the event.