50's Party
This weekend my sister and I threw my mom a surprise 60th birthday party. My mom is very selfless and always thinking of others, so we really wanted to create a special day just for her! She seemed genuinely surprised and enjoyed spending time with family we don't see often. It was difficult keeping this a secret for months while we planned, but even my 4 year old niece played along!
We decided on a 50's theme for the shower. I immediately began looking around online for ideas. I'm slightly hooked on Pinterest, which is where I get a lot of my ideas! I also am a member of a Facebook group of cupcake enthusiasts where everyone shares ideas. I settled on soda fountain and record cupcakes. I also saw an idea to create cupcake stands out of records, this looked perfect for the party!
Thankfully we were able to keep the party a surprise! Here's a few pics from the party.
The first thing we created was the cupcake stand. My fiancé helped me create these unique 50's inspired stands. I used some records I found at my parents house along with some blue plastic glasses I found at Michaels. This was a combination of a couple different ideas I found on Pinterest. We used craft glue to combine the pieces. After gluing each new piece was glued, Tyler stopped and used a heavy book to apply pressure. We let it sit for about 10 minutes after each new piece was glued. It took a long time to create, but they held up great!
While Tyler was finishing up the stands, I worked on baking the cupcakes. I decided to create vanilla cupcakes and red velvet cupcakes. I tried a new technique for scooping the batter into the cupcake wrappers. I used a spring loaded ice cream scoop to dispense the batter into the wrappers. I had seen this idea on Cupcake Wars. The red velvet batter was a little runnier than the vanilla, so it didn't work quite as well. But this technique worked great for the vanilla! It really helped to get a much more consistent size in cupcakes and they had a uniform, evenly domed shape after baking. I will definitely use this technique again!
After baking the cupcakes, I let them sit all night and decorated them the next morning.
Soda Pop Vanilla cupcakes
I started by piping the icing onto the cupcake using the rose tip that I've used in the previous entries. I started out with the outer edge, working inward in a spiral slowly building it up. After letting the icing sit for a while, I added the straws. We cut the straws down to a good proportion, and put them into the cupcake at the edge of the icing. The cupcakes were finished up with a maraschino cherry on top. I patted the cherries dry with a paper towel first, to minimize the cherry sauce that would soak into the icing.
We decided on a 50's theme for the shower. I immediately began looking around online for ideas. I'm slightly hooked on Pinterest, which is where I get a lot of my ideas! I also am a member of a Facebook group of cupcake enthusiasts where everyone shares ideas. I settled on soda fountain and record cupcakes. I also saw an idea to create cupcake stands out of records, this looked perfect for the party!
Thankfully we were able to keep the party a surprise! Here's a few pics from the party.
Drying the final layer of the cupcake stand
Final cupcake stand
While Tyler was finishing up the stands, I worked on baking the cupcakes. I decided to create vanilla cupcakes and red velvet cupcakes. I tried a new technique for scooping the batter into the cupcake wrappers. I used a spring loaded ice cream scoop to dispense the batter into the wrappers. I had seen this idea on Cupcake Wars. The red velvet batter was a little runnier than the vanilla, so it didn't work quite as well. But this technique worked great for the vanilla! It really helped to get a much more consistent size in cupcakes and they had a uniform, evenly domed shape after baking. I will definitely use this technique again!
After baking the cupcakes, I let them sit all night and decorated them the next morning.
Soda Pop Vanilla cupcakes
I started by piping the icing onto the cupcake using the rose tip that I've used in the previous entries. I started out with the outer edge, working inward in a spiral slowly building it up. After letting the icing sit for a while, I added the straws. We cut the straws down to a good proportion, and put them into the cupcake at the edge of the icing. The cupcakes were finished up with a maraschino cherry on top. I patted the cherries dry with a paper towel first, to minimize the cherry sauce that would soak into the icing.
Rockin' Red Velvet cupcakes
These cupcakes were a bit more complicated to create. I was going to create the records out of chocolate, but I decided to go for something that would be less likely to melt due to the weather. I decided to use black Sugar Sheets from Hobby Lobby. The sheets were pretty easy to cut and use. We were able to use round cookie cutters and an Exacto knife to cut out the shape. I placed them on a thin layer of cream cheese icing. I wanted to have a flatter icing, so instead of piping I used a small spatula to ice the cupcake.
To finish out the cupcake, I dyed some of the cream cheese icing blue. I put this icing in a pastry bag with a coupler and one of the smallest decorating tips. I used this to create the music notes. I put records on most of them, but the ones that didn't have them had various music symbols.
These cupcakes are a fun addition to any 50's themed party! I also really liked the cupcake stand, and am looking forward to finding other themed cupcake stands in the future.
I was also excited this morning to find that my flower cupcakes from a previous post were selected to be in a guest blog on Cupcake Ideas for You and they even made a video on YouTube! I hadn't received an email that my cupcakes were featured, but I saw the video linked this morning on Pinterest! It was pretty exciting and surreal to see my creations on a YouTube video! Cupcake Ideas for You is a site and blog for bakers to get share ideas for cupcakes and cakes. I had submitted it about a week ago and they had featured lots of cupcakes since then, but hadn't included mine. But they just created a wedding cupcake idea section and my cupcakes were one of the 6 featured! I was excited to have them selected, especially since most of the bakers are professional.
I was also excited this morning to find that my flower cupcakes from a previous post were selected to be in a guest blog on Cupcake Ideas for You and they even made a video on YouTube! I hadn't received an email that my cupcakes were featured, but I saw the video linked this morning on Pinterest! It was pretty exciting and surreal to see my creations on a YouTube video! Cupcake Ideas for You is a site and blog for bakers to get share ideas for cupcakes and cakes. I had submitted it about a week ago and they had featured lots of cupcakes since then, but hadn't included mine. But they just created a wedding cupcake idea section and my cupcakes were one of the 6 featured! I was excited to have them selected, especially since most of the bakers are professional.
