Help with my cup cakes please!!

[MrsBish]

Hi,

My friend is getting married next month and wants to serve cup cakes and a drink after the service. There is a few of us who have offered to bake and decorate 48 cup cakes each. I did a trial run on Sat and didn't have much success, looking for any advice for the following probs -

The caterers have said that we need to use a dairy free icing so that there isn't any concern about butter icing going off and making people ill. I tried a thick icing sugar and water mix and it looked naff and didn't set properly. Even the next morning it wasn't set hard. Any ideas? I am wondering if circles of that shop bought roll out icing may be best.

The cake stuck to the muffin wrappers pretty badly and didn't peel off nicely, leaving you with a bit of a mess in a wrapper. How do we solve this one? Are the cakes best served the next day or something?

Also I don't want to be baking 48 cup cakes the day before the wedding, as it happens to be my birthday and hopefully I'll have other things to do! Will they be ok frozen and defrosted, then iced? What's the best timeframe for this. Could I possibly decorate then on the Thursday before the Saturday wedding? How long do they stay fresh?

Sorry to go on!!

Hmm. You might want to try using Royal icing sugar and water, plus a spoonful of glycerin to stop it from going too hard; make it with some lemon juice instead of all water.

They will definitely be OK frozen, though you probably don't want to decorate more than one day in advance. Second the royal icing idea.

re. the sticking to the case problem, what recipe were you using. A slightly less rich recipe than the standard 1 egg= 50 g each of sugar, butter and flour is a bit more robust. So maybe use 1 egg to 50g each sugar and butter and 65g flour.

HTH

Wouldn't worry too much about cakes sticking to wrappers - you could always make your own out of baking parchment, which can be pretty, but is a bit of a faff, and everyone would have to do the same. i suspect they'll come out better the next day, having had a chance to really cool down.

Leith's Baking bible says most cakes freeze well - open freeze uncovered first, and then put in storage bags or boxes. I'd only ice the day before, tbh.

This is a chocolate glaze which might work if you buy something pretty to go on top.

this is the recipe that i use for cupcakes,the wrappers peel off easily and they also freeze a treat!
125g unsalted butter
125g caster sugar
2 large eggs
125g SR flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
2-3 tbls milk

this can all be blitzed in the processer then baked for 15-20 mins @ 200oc/gas mark 6

have to say that i'm a bitre:the caterers non dairy comments about buttercream as this could be made the night before,makes you wonder how generations of school kids haven't dropped after their cake sales!

what you could try is buying a packet of instant royal icing and then adding paste colour to it,it needs only a few moments to slightly set before you decorate it further.

HTH

on the dairy-free, but I have had a lot of success with cupcakes with American Frosting (cooked meringue) - it gives you the same sort of visual effect as buttercream.

iced cupcakes will keep a couple of days (or longer) as long as the icing completely covers the cake IYSWIM - and freezing uniced cakes - definitely - I almost always do just to separate the time and mess of baking from the time and mess of icing.