Memorial Day
Hi there, welcome to Lovingly Whisked! Today's Sweet Talk is about the delicious goodies I made for this heroic holiday. Let's dig in!
STORIES
5/27/20265 min read
Star Spangled Sweets
Now that I have my designs sketched out, it's time to gather materials, ingredients I don't already have, and get to baking! I do my best to keep an inventory of all my materials, like cake boards, boxes, stickers, etc. I am actually out of cupcake boxes, but I have everything else that I need ingredient-wise. I like to plan as much as possible, so I decided to go ahead and bake the cupcakes, then run to town while they cool to get the boxes.
Making my chocolate cupcakes is muscle memory at this point. It is such an easy recipe, needing no waiting for any ingredients to become room temperature, just throwing ingredients into a bowl. Who doesn't love that kind of recipe? It's all very simple and basic pantry ingredients, plus a couple of extra dashes to enhance the chocolate flavor. For my chocolate cake, I use a tiny dash of espresso powder and a sprinkle of cayenne powder. It sounds odd to some, but it makes the best chocolate cake I have ever had. Once everything was mixed, I poured the batter into the cutest red, white, and blue cupcake papers and into the oven to bake! These typically bake for about 20 minutes. I let them cool for a couple of minutes, and then onto a cooling rack.
I quickly run to get a cupcake box, so I can get back and get started on the buttercream. I love icing colors, but sometimes I really hate mixing the colors. I am slowly working my supplies up to get the squirt bottles of gel food colors instead of the little tubs I've been using. The little containers you have to dip color out of work completely fine, especially as you're first starting. However, the more orders I get, the more I wish I had the bottles. It genuinely speeds up the coloring process, and it's just so much easier to squeeze color into the icing versus using a toothpick to dip color out. I also feel like the bottles are a little more pigmented, as well. Luckily, I only had to color red and blue. I split my buttercream into thirds and got to coloring. I have gotten pretty good at controlling the reds; however, I haven't iced very many blue cakes in my day. It took a bit longer to get the shade of blue I wanted, but I finally found it. Sometimes, I can get the color spot on; other times, I use the microwave method to deepen the color. I have yet to use the blender/emulsion method. I probably should, but I haven't yet.
Finally, it's time to decorate. I get all the buttercream into piping bags with couplers on them, so it's easier to switch the tips out. I won't bore you with the piping details. Go look at my TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram account to see how I decorated these cupcakes! It was such a process, but it was well worth it for the final look! After decorating, they got the final pictures, boxed, stickered, and ready for delivery! I love bakes like these, and as always, I love seeing the look on my customers' faces when they get their sweets. I have an ongoing thing where my customers trust me to not see their bakes until the day they receive their product, and I absolutely love it! I always offer to show them sketches and final looks before they get boxed, but they always say they want to be surprised. It's an undescribable feeling, knowing I already have such trust with my clients. I am so grateful for every single one of them.
Anyways, here are some pictures of these glorious cupcakes! As always, check out the socials for exclusive content from my bakes. Such as piping videos, behind the scenes, and everything in between. Thank you so much for being here and reading my stories. Thank you for tagging along on this journey with me and supporting my dreams. None of this would be possible without any of you! Make sure to give me a follow, subscribe to the site, and don't miss the next bake! Until next time! Happy baking! <3
Memorial Day is such a special holiday, and my heart goes out to all of those who have fought for our country to keep us safe and living the glorious lives that we do. I will forever be grateful! I don't know about your family, but my family always gets together, grills some delicious food, and enjoys the company of one another. Being the family baker, I made a delicious cookie cake. You can't go wrong with a cookie cake, and let me tell you, not a crumb of it went to waste. I also had an order for the coolest red, white, and blue cupcakes you've ever seen!
Let's get into the cupcakes first! One of my amazing repeat customers hit me up wanting her favorite chocolate cupcakes, and gave me complete creative freedom, her only request being that they were red, white, and blue. I love having creative freedom, but sometimes it takes me some time to pin down a design. I don't know about my other bakers out there, but I love using Procreate on my iPad to help me visualize my ideas. I use it for about everything anymore. I sat down and got to sketching. When I am asked to make cupcakes, I don't create one design. I like to change it up and do something different. For these cupcakes, I ended up sketching four different designs. I like to go above and beyond for all of my customers, and especially the ones who keep coming back to order again. (Y'all know who you are! I love you!)
Here's what my sketches typically look like. They're not very pretty, and it's difficult to see the vision, but it really helps me get my ideas out and helps when it comes to actually decorating. Especially when I have complicated designs, or decide to do four different designs for one dozen cupcakes!
I need to work on my photography game. I'm not always the best at taking good pictures of my product. I get too caught up in packaging, labeling, and getting them to the customer. But here they are!
Oh! And here is my cookie cake! It's not the best. I used the remaining icing from the cupcakes. This was for our family dinner on Memorial Day. I was running late and ended up having to decorate it at the get-together. Although it's not my favorite design I threw together, not a piece of it was left by the end of the day. I'd call that a successful holiday weekend!
