The Night of One Thousand Cupcakes.

....One Thousand is a bit of an exaggeration...it was more like 400ish....which is basically one thousand.

6pm on Friday night found me in the aisles of Kroger buying 8 pounds of butter...bags of sugar and flour...hundreds of mini cupcake wrappers...dozens of eggs...my grocery cart drew not a few stares. I stood in line thinking, "Who am I? How did I get here? Am I really going to go home and bake for the next 5 hours? I need an intervention."

The goods:

Absurd!

I used 3 mini cupcake baking sheets that made 24 cupcakes each, and one that made 12. This situation was perfect because each batch made between 70 and 90 mini cupcakes. I found that one regular cupcake equals a bit more than three mini cupcakes.

I made one batch each of Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes (minus the whiskey chocolate filling), Dark Chocolate Mint Cupcakes, Buttermilk Cupcakes with whipped Chocolate Ganache, Devil's Food Cupcakes with same whipped Chocolate Ganache and Lemon-Blueberry Cupcakes. I made a double batch of my souped-up italian meringue buttercream, divided into three, and flavored it with baileys, lemon juice/extract and mint extract.

The result:

This photo is not nearly impressive enough. When Eric came home he stopped short and worked his mouth soundlessly for a while before saying "That's...a lot of cupcakes."

I put all the cupcakes in plastic containers and transported them to the show un-iced, because really, how on earth could I take 400 iced cupcakes anywhere without a catastrophe? If someone has an answer, please share it with me.

I sat behind my booth frosting cupcakes before the show started. It was so cold that I had to hold my tubes of frosting close to me before they were warm enough to flow.

This is Eric and Me at my booth. More pictures to come when I can get my hands on my coworker's camera again.

You can see a bit of my stationary in the back ground there. To be honest, the screen-printing was my focus, more than the baking.

I was very, very nervous leading up to this event. I was scared people would look at me and think "Who is this Holly Hobby?" Therefore I was THRILLED when people mistook me for a business that had existed before that day. "This is great. Where are you located?"

I was placed with the other cake people, and got all sorts of compliments the attendees and other vendors. Soundbites include "This is the best thing I've ever had in my mouth." "I thought that cake was good until I tried this." and "Oh. My. God."

I was literally shaking when Eric arrived, but it was not from sugar as you might expect. I only ate two cupcakes the whole time, if you can believe that. I was just flooded with adrenaline and excitement and the extreme ego-boost pleasure.

I shouldn't have bothered with the chocolate and vanilla cupcakes. People were more adventurous than I gave them credit for. Most went for the special flavors.

This is what was leftover after the show:

Cupcakes as far as the eye can see...

We gave the leftovers to our small group and to work and neighbors and finally we are rid of this epic batch of cupcakes.

What if someone actually asks me to do a wedding?