Cupcake Decorating

You may remember that awhile back I did a post on the cake decorating we did last summer. Big hit. Big mess. Tons o'fun - for the teens at least. Well we did it again (sort of) this summer.

Originally, the idea had been brought to me by my literacy coordinator. A couple of the women on the Friends board are cake decorators and wanted to do a program with the teens. I was given the impression this would be a program every week, and I said ok. Well, come to find out later they wanted it to only be a one-time deal, and they wanted to limit the # of kids.

Again, I was ok with this - limiting the # totally made sense. So I made a sign up sheet, limited it to 15 and made up some signs as well as put it on the fliers we sent to the schools. The response was incredible! We were filled up in no time, but I had people write down the names of anyone interested so that perhaps I could persuade the women to at the very least do a second class for anyone on the list.

The day of the class got closer, the women had everything planned out, and then the day before (or possibly the day of - I don't remember) - both women fell ill. I completely understood - we set the date for the next Tuesday, and I called all the teens and told them of the change in days. Well later that day, she called me back saying she'd have to move it because her partner would be out of town that day. I told her that I had already called all the teens and so she agreed to still have it that day after I assured her she'd have plenty of help from our children's staff and our volunteers.

The day before the program rolled around again, and she had to call and cancel because she'd been in the hospital that weekend. Apparently I wasn't caring enough, because I found out later that she was upset with me, but I assured her everything was ok, and I understood that she had been in the hospital, but I was already trying to problem-solve in my brain, so maybe th

at's why I came off cold. I talked to the director, and decided to do the cupcake decorating program myself . There was no way I was calling those teens back to cancel a second time without being able to give them a definite date for the future!

So I called Publix, and they were willing to sell me unfrosted cupcakes by the pound. I grabbed the two awesome cupcake books we had on our shelves, Hello Cupcake and What's New, Cupcake? by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson and went shopping for supplies. We decided to make koi fish out of circus peanuts and roses out of orange slices (both of which are in the books), because they seemed the simplest. I called all the teens on the list (about 30) and invited them all to come - after all, these were relatively simple, I was going to have a lot of help, so why not do them all at once? The teens had a great time (all girls, I believe), and some even got to do a few extras because we had some no-shows. It was a little last minute, but a great success and something I would recommend to any library that has those books!

Cake Decorating

We were planning for our summer kickoff carnival, when we got the brilliant idea to do cake decorating. For our kids' carnival we read "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake" and let the children decorate cupcakes. Then we said "Why should the little kids get all the fun?”

My hope was that I could get one of the people from “Ace of Cakes” to come and do a demo, but I had no such luck. It’s ok – I understand they’re busy people. *sigh* It was then that I had to figure out a plan b, so I turned to Publix. I had been told in the past that they donate supplies to places, so I called the bakery to see what I could work out. They told me I needed to write a letter to corporate and get the donation of supplies approved, and then we could talk about getting a decorator to come and do a demonstration for my teens.

I wrote a letter and faxed it ASAP, and within a week I got a $100 gift card! Score! I called the bakery back, but didn’t get a response. Not a problem. I got the supplies (and 6 hours of baking and making of icing later), and decided to do the program myself. A couple of days before the program, the Publix bakery finally called me back, and agreed to have a decorator come out. She did a demo, showing the teens different techniques, and icing a couple of cakes (both of which we got to keep – awesome!).

While the demo was going, my coworkers and I set up the supplies. I baked a bunch of 13” x 9” cakes and quartered them, and made I don’t know how many batches of buttercream. We used the Wilton recipe, but with so many hands handling it for so long, I’m not sure it was the best idea. The icing got really runny after awhile. Maybe if we had had ice to rest it on when it wasn’t being used things would’ve fared better. Live and learn. The teens had a blast (even the guys), and it is definitely a program I will do again sometime.