Summer means wedding season, and I absolutely love baking and decorating for special occasions like these. A family friend asked if I could bake for her son’s wedding brunch, and I couldn’t refuse, especially since it was such a simple request: 36 packaged cupcakes as wedding favors and a small cutting cake for the bride and groom. At first, she wanted simple vanilla cupcakes with sage green swirls and nice wrappers, but after seeing this, she asked if I could make grass and flowers on each of the cupcakes.
This was a breeze and I was able to prep a lot of it in advance. I bought these clear 3”x 3” boxes on beau-coup and they had perfectly sized bases to hold the cupcake in place. A bit time consuming to assemble, but I watched season 4 of Arrested Development while fitting all the boxes and bases together and sticking my logo at the bottom of the boxes; nothing some hilarious TV time couldn’t handle. (This is how I’m able to watch so much telly with the crazy schedule; I’m usually doing laundry or writing or prepping for some baking project at the same time.) The Wilton picket fence wrappers had a nice soft pearl sheen and were a cinch to put together in advance. And for the finishing touches, I went to Michael’s and bought a few rolls of sage green ribbon and measured out two feet at a time so I could tie neat bows on each of the clear favor boxes. (By this time, we were watching Breaking Bad, another fantastic show.)
A day before baking, I mixed together all the pastel colors for the flowers (light pink, soft yellow, and a lovely lilac) and made about 4 quarts of green frosting. I knew a bulk of the frosting would be used for the grass, and I figured I would use the rest to ice Vin’s birthday cake.
I baked 4 dozen cupcakes and a small fillable cake the day before the wedding and let everything completely cool while I baked the layers for the typewriter cake. I took out the super fun cake decorating tip that is perfect for making things such as grass, spaghetti noodles, Cookie Monster hair and fuzzy animal fur, and I just piped away making grass grow all over the vanilla cakes.
By the time I got to working on the flowers, I pulled the workbench into the middle of the hallway so I could sit and surprise, surprise– watch TV (“Haywire” with former American Gladiator/MMA fighter Gina Carano was on and all I remember was it made no sense and there were a lot of random fight scenes). I used the same tips for the pink and yellow flowers and put a light pink sugar bead in the pink blooms and a light blue one in the yellow flowers. The purple buds were left as is and filled in the empty spaces for the cutting cake.
And that was pretty much it. I arranged the little garden of cupcakes on a baking tray and put them in the fridge, along with the little cake. The next morning, I put the cupcakes in the picket wrapper and carefully plopped them into the clear favor boxes. The last part was tying a light green bow on each of the boxes, and it such a nice touch against the contained grassy gardens.
Not only was this wedding project super easy, it ended up looking really cute. We brought the favors and the small cake to the bride and groom and all the guests loved it. And I think this was one of the best batches of vanilla cake I’ve ever baked.
Congrats to the newlyweds!
