One of the things our students tell us is most daunting is baking large batches of cakes, some having had bad experiences of being in the kitchen until the wee hours, followed by even more hours of cleaning up, and complete panic when it comes to setting up and displaying a cupcake tower. When you start taking on larger orders it can be very stressful and its easy to jump in and start anywhere you can for fear of time running out when a few little organistaional tweaks can relieve that stress and save you lots of time.

All of us here at BDB run our own cupcake businesses or have done, so here are our top tips for baking big batches of cupcakes.

1. Knowing you have the right ingredients and the right amount of each ingredient may sound obvious but its easily forgotten. When you’re convinced you have a cupboard full of caster sugar, the most chilling feeling is to realise on the morning of the big bake that you used it all mid-week for that treacle tart Mary Berry made on GBBO. So 2 or 3 days before, check your ingredients.

2. Sitting down for half an hour and working out how many bags of flour and boxes of eggs you use for 100 or 300 cakes is priceless in terms of time-saving. Keep a record of these amounts and then the next time you have a large order coming up it’ll take 2 minutes to check what you have and exactly how much more you need to order.

3. Make your buttercream in advance and in BIG batches. Buttercream can be frozen and will keep in the fridge for roughly a week so why not make it in advance?! A quick mix of room temperature buttercream will have it as smooth as new. Just imagine. No icing sugar clouds to deal with on the day of the bake!

4. Before baking, set out all of your ingredients in front of you. If warming your butter or milk do it now so its all there in front of you, rather than running between your mixer and the microwave over and again. The same goes for equipment. One mad rush for measuring jugs and weighing scales now is better than 6 mad rushes during baking.

5. The more baking trays you have the better. It may seem excessive but this is when you’ll be really glad you bought 3 too many. Laying them out on as a big a surface as you can find and lining with cupcake cases in one go will save you lots of time later. And if you buy lots of the same brand that stack nicely no one can tell you off for taking up too much room in the cupboard!

6. Believe it or not you can also start to prepare for displaying your cakes at this early stage too. If your display consists of 2 or 3 different colour cases and you want them to alternate around the stand, alternate them in your trays. This takes no extra time but cuts out any late night diagram drawings of setting up or frantic box swapping at the venue.

7. Tidy as you go – another obvious one but getting rid of empty packets and egg shells helps you concentrate. A quick wipe over surfaces helps clear your mind as well as your workspace. To help with the fall out later on have a bowl of soapy water for pre-soaking equipment (but remember to wash hands in a separate area) -this will make grease and smudges come away with ease when washed thoroughly (one of Guru Kath’s favorites!).

8. Ice cream scoops are a god-send for evenly distributing cake mix with much less mess and much more speed. We use 2 different sizes – for flat and domed tops, both available in our online shop!

9. BIG boxes are a must. You can buy heavy duty boxes for 24 cupcakes online which have endless advantages. As soon as your cakes are cool enough pop them straight into your boxes – again they can go in the same order as they sat in your trays if you’re doing an alternating display. They can then be stacked out of the way until you’re ready to decorate – then you can ice your cakes in the box and move around with ease.

10. Decant your sprinkles into pots you can fit your hand in for easy access rather than wrestling with miniscule plastic packets. Another plus of bulk boxes is they’re self contained sprinkle catchers! As long as you’re not worried about a little rattling of loose sprinkles in the bottom there’s nothing wrong with sprinkling your cakes in the box. Hours of rogue sprinkle hunting saved!

We hope this will help anyone tackling a large order in the future and we’d love to hear your tips for stress free baking too! What helps you to be efficient in the kitchen? What have you learnt from big orders? Any big successes or never to be mentioned again disasters?!

Jenny x

Easter is fast approaching, which is a brilliant reason to get creative with our cupcakes! This week is the first of our Easter themed tutorials, to give you plenty of inspiration and time to plan what cakey treats you’ll be gifting!

What you’ll need…

Brown Sugar Paste (either pre-coloured or coloured with lots of Chestnut Gel)
CMC Powder
Edible Glue & Paintbrush
Yellow Florist Paste (coloured with Egg Yellow Gel Colour)
Bow Cutter (we used the medium size from our set of 3)
Non-Stick Rolling Mat
Foam Decoration Drying Pad
Mini Eggs
Grass & Hair Nozzle
Wilton 1M Nozzle
Piping Bags
Cupcake
Green Buttercream (we used a mixture of Party Green and Holly Green)
Chocolate Buttercream

1. First we need to make the handle and rim of our basket. Add a little CMC powder to your brown sugar paste (not too much as we need it to stay pliable while we’re working with it but set stiff!). Section 3 pieces, each roughly the size of a large Malteser! then roll each one very thinly, into very long sausages.

2. Glue together the sausages at one end and gently plait them, keeping them as tight as possible without stretching or breaking them – gently squeezing the length together after plaiting will get rid of any gaps and keep your plait neat. Glue together the other ends and cut off any excess.

3. Now cut two pieces of your plait, roughly 2 1/2 inches long and shape on the drying foam, one in a curved shape for the basket handle, and the other in a complete circle, with each end glued together to form the basket rim. Make a bow as per our Youtube tutorial (see below), stick to the rim and leave all pieces to dry overnight.

Bow Cutter Tutorial

4. Once your pieces are set, fit the grass nozzle into a piping bag and fill with green sugarpaste. Flat ice your cupcake with extra green buttercream (optional). Then pipe your grass – hold the piping bag vertical, squeeze gently then stop squeezing and pull away – repeat all over cupcake, leaving the centre a little lower or free of grass.

5. Fit the Wilton 1M nozzle into a piping bag and fill with chocolate buttercream. Pipe a circle just in from the edge of the cake, then pipe a second on top of the first to create a bit of height to your basket.

6. Add 3 Mini Eggs to the centre of your basket (we’ve added a few pearls too, just because they’re pretty!). Then take your basket rim and place it on top of the basket, surrounding the Mini Eggs. Now put your handle in place, fitting it just inside the rim, into the buttercream to hold it steady. Done!

We hope you enjoyed this week’s tutorial. If you’re pushed for time you can substitute the plaited handle for strawberry bootlaces with a small ribbon bow. Whichever way you make your Easter Basket Cupcakes we’d love to see a picture posted on our Facebook wall!

And remember, you can buy all of the equipment we use in each tutorial on our online shop, here… http://bluedoorbakery.highwire.com/

Jenny x

This week our blog aims to raise awareness for a fantastic cause, as well as showing you a few tips and tricks in the cupcake department! We’ll be demonstrating how to make a beautiful sugar paste daffodil in dedication to The Great Daffodil Appeal, run by Marie Curie Cancer Care.

“Each March, the Great Daffodil Appeal aims to get everyone to wear a daffodil in support of our Marie Curie Nurses and raise money to help us provide more free care to people with terminal cancer and other illnesses.” (Marie Curie website, February 2012)

We think its really important to support causes as worthy as this one, so this March we’ll have our very own box of daffodil pins, courtesy of Marie Curie Cancer Care. They’ll be available to all our lovely customers, visiting us for classes or our shop, for a small donation to the charity.

And now to make our daffodil….

What you’ll need

Non-stick Rolling Mat
Rolling Pin
Sugarpaste coloured with a little Egg Yellow Gel Colour
Petunia Cutter & Mould Set
Foam Drying Pad
Lemon Yellow Dusting Colour
Paintbrush
Cocktail Stick
Edible Glue
Cupcake & Buttercream for frosting

1. Roll out the yellow paste reasonably thinly and cut out the petunia shape. Then place the shape in the mould and press down gently to emboss your flower

2. Take your paintbrush and Lemon Yellow dusting colour and dust your flower from the centre outward, applying quite liberally into the centre but leaving the edges pale. Leave the flower to dry on the bumpy side of a foam drying pad, so that it curls in on itself slightly

3. And now to create the trumpet! Take a small piece of the yellow sugarpaste (roughly the size of your little finger nail) and roll into a cone between your thumb and forefinger, gently flattening the bottom with your other forefinger

4. Now take the end of your paintbrush and push your cone onto the top of it so that it sits snugly, with the paintbrush nearly reaching the point

5. Keeping the cone on the end of the paintbrush, gently press the cocktail stick into the side, lengthways. Continue this right the way around the cone so that it gives a “grooved” effect. This will also thin out the trumpet and make it slightly larger

6. Brush the centre of the flower with a little edible glue and place the trumpet in the centre. Leave to dry before dusting the inside of the cone with more lemon yellow

7. Place on a cupcake with a pre-piped swirl and join us in making more people aware of the Great Daffodil Appeal!

We hope you enjoyed the blog this week and that you’ll be wearing a daffodil on your lapel as well as your cupcake.

For more information on the Marie Curie Great Daffodil Appeal, ideas for fundraising, how you can join in, and to donate to a great cause please click HERE

Thank you!

Jenny x