If I was to make 65 cupcakes... where the hell would I start?

[Bangtastic]

It is my mums 65th Birthday in 3 weeks, we were going to order her cake for her party tomorrow, but I threw the cupcake tower idea into the bowl to see what everyone thought. Prices seem to be in the £150 region, when you consider the cost per cupcake, stand hire, and delivery etc. Don't mind paying that at all, but part of me thinks it'd be nice to do it myself... haven't mentioned this part yet, wanted to see what was involved before committing!

I am a pretty good cook, I seem to be able to manage most things I put my mind to and have patience with. I mastered chocolate eclairs yesterday for example

So where would I start? How would I get quantities right for 65 decent sized cupcakes with a firm buttercream red/black/white icing?

Any help from more experienced bakers would be much appreciated :)

I've done this before and it's easier and quicker than you'd think. I tend to make separate batches, I.e. one lot of cake mix fills two trays of cupcake cases, put them in the oven whilst making the next lot and then carry on til you make enough. I think I made 60+ last time and I only had three rounds of cooking to do.

For icing, I also made batches, using the same ratios each time so the colour and consistency was the same. I think this is easier than trying to make a bucketful at once and you will need to ice the cakes in stages anyway as they will be cooling at different rates, so you will have time to play around with it til you're happy it's right.

I got a Perspex cake tower from eBay too and that shows them off a treat. Good luck!

Ohhh glad someone managed to do it and lived to tell the tale

I don't suppose you have the recipe that you followed do you? I'm okay at cooking things as long as I have a decent recipe to work with! It's never me that messes things up, it's always the recipe being dodgy ..

I made 60-odd a few months ago for dh's birthday (to share with the office, he's not 65!) and used the hummingbird bakery book. It doesn't make as many as stated in the recipes, but they worked really well. It's worth experimenting with how much batter to put in each case to fill it when cooked, so maybe do a test run. I did a variety of vanilla, chocolate and red velvet and they all went down really, really well. Good luck!

Baking 60 odd cakes is not going to be hard or time consuming. Icing them might me, Do something really easy, simple but effective. A chocolate and cream icing (is that ganache I've never been sure) with a white chocolate button.
Glace icing but made with lemon juice and a dolly mixture on each. You get the idea I'm sure.
If you use slightly posh cake cases they'll look the part more for no extra effort.

I would do 3/4 separate batches.

Your basic sponge recipe is:

225g/8oz butter or margarine, softened at room temperature
225g/8oz caster sugar
4 medium eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
225g/8oz self raising flour

Add flavourings/etc from there; cocoa, choc chips, almond essence - whatever.

Basic butter cream is
150g butter
250g icing sugar
1-2 tbsp of milk

Then a couple of drops of food colouring.
Beware of black icing, (maybe use black as an accent?) it can take on a sour taste if too much colouring is added.

If there was a particular flavour/type of cupcake you wanted I have loads of recipe books, I could take a look?

Ohh Mermaidspam thank you so much, those recipes look straight forward enough for me to tackle!

The colour scheme is deep red/black with some white thrown in to break it up. Was thinking of just doing basic vanilla sponges in black and red cases, with a white buttercream (well.. as white as it can be!) and some simple black/red decorations plonked on top on the buttercream.

Is there a way I'd get a really red buttercream without having to slosh a load of food colouring in?

Use a Wilton 1 M icing nozzle for a professional finish.
You can order online frim various suppliers or try Hobbycraft for a starter kit.

get the (more expensive) toothpaste consistency food colouring (lots of web based baking sites sell it) rather than the watery stuff from the decorating aisle at Tesco. I'm sure someone will know it's proper name...

Not really, I'm afraid. As long as you use a liquid you should be able to get a nice deep red without affecting the taste.

Either that or you may be able to buy it ready-coloured from a cake decorating shop? Or use red fondant icing?

this is quite good

Sorry, just noticed I put liquid, when I meant paste.

Paste, yeah was thinking you meant that as the last time I tried to use liquid colouring in buttercream, I ended up with buttermilk!

Thanks so much for all your help, I've come over all Barefoot Contessa all of a sudden and DH is breaking out in a sweat at the sight of food mixers and cake supplies on my screen

Ha! Wait until you're using him as your sous chef, then he'll be sweating!

Really easy recipe is to weigh the eggs then use the same amount butter, sugar and flour. Cant really get it wrong. Again i agree with the paste, you can get it in most good baking stores, online or hobby craft if you have 1 near you.

Dd1 and I made over 100 for dd2's 16th - was quite easy. Most were vanilla, some chocolate, and we used butter icing. It used up loads of butter!!

The basic recipe was 125g butter, sr flour and caster sugar, 2 eggs, vanilla essence and a 1 - 2 tbs of milk, taken from Next's children's fairy cakes book. It didn't take half as long as we thought (did it on the morning of the party), used disposable icing bags from Lakeland. I got a few stackable brocolli type boxes (not too deep) from Tesco and lined them with paper for transporting them to the venue.

Enjoy! They did look spectacular but I think that was more down to dd1's icing!

Depending on how much time you have, you could buy ready made butter cream from the supermarkets.

You could make the buttercream a day or two before to get that process out of the way.

Keep it in the fridge, then make sure you bring it to room temperature and give it another good whip up before using it.

A red is quite difficult to get as you are mixing it in to a "yellow" buttercream, so try and use Lurpak as it tends to be a whiter butter, really whip it to make it even paler, before you add the icing sugar. It's quite pinky. The best paste to buy is Christmas Red.

Buy some red and black fondant icing, as hard to colour the white icing to get a really deep colour, then you can use this to cut out shapes and decorations. Lakeland might do it, or definitely ebay. About £2.25-£2.50 a pack.

My favourite website for bits is www.cakescookiesandcraftsshop.co.uk

Without wanting to sound picky, a sponge recipe isn't technically the same as an American cupcake recipe: the latter has much less fat, more sugar and more liquid which makes them sweeter but also lighter and they keep better for longer. Will post a recipe if I get time later Sponges are nice too though, just depends what you want.

Thanks everyone who has replied since last night :)

Daisy that'd be great if you could, all input welcome! Going to do a trial batch on Sunday and see how I get on. I'm not so nervous about the actual cakes, more the buttercream and icing/decorating them! Got visions of it all melting and people standing around the stand sniggering whilst I sit shame faced in the corner

Just about to type it out and found a few of their recipes here

Good luck, hope it goes well!

Simple way to decorate is to buy some small number cutters and then cut out numbers 1-65 in rolled out icing and stick on top of your buttercream. Much quicker than piping and looks really good.

I did this for a friends 50 - I bought the icing from a cake decorating shop as I was running out of time - and they looked really good. I did butter cream, then a disk of rolled out icing with the numbers stuck on. I had some vanilla and some chocolate buttercream I think and the disks were red with white numbers or white with red numbers (football team colours!)

Thanks Daisy, will take a look now!

Jicky that's a good idea :) definitely want something to just plonk on to or in to the buttercream, was originally thinking of just some black and red edible shimmery beads but will look into the numbers as well!

Spooky. I've just put batch 6 in the oven for the PTA cake sale this afternoon!

I started at 9.30 and this last lot will come out in 10 minutes- that'll be 72.

It's really quick and easy -I do this all the time- my record was 200 for a wedding in the summer. Any questions, just ask.

Any questions? Fancy doing them for me?

It does sound really easy.. I've put the idea out there now and everyone thinks it's a great idea, and I have bought the cake stand (5 tier clear perspex, that'll be big enough won't it?!)

What icing are you using seeker? I definitely want to do buttercream, I'm just really nervous about it all going wrong and somehow not being thick enough to pipe on nicely and decorate, so if anybody has an absolutely fool proof tried and tested numerous times recipe I'd be forever grateful!

Stand definitely big enough bangtastic

Buttercream is 250g butter (a block of butter) and whisk whisk whisk to make it light and creamy, then add just under 500g of icing sugar.

Add a tablespoon of vanilla or other flavour.

If it's too stiff (it shouldn't be) you can add a tablespoon of milk. But careful as this could make it a little sloppy, as if you then add your warm nervous hands around a piping bag ..... So try without the milk!

1M tip as mentioned before and its comes out beautifully.

I'm off to make some now!