A Weekend of Firsts!

This past weekend was what a call a weekend of firsts. While I am constantly challenging myself to try something new, there was a lot of that happening this weekend.

On Saturday I debuted one of the handmade cupcake stands I built last weekend at a friends wedding, which displayed and served 120 of my first wedding cupcakes. This was the largest order I have made yet!

Furthermore, I launched two new cake and icing flavors into my repertoire: chocolate curry and champagne flavored cupcakes and chocolate ganache and mimosa flavored frostings. 

Since it was a West Indian wedding, my aim was to bring out some of the popular flavors of "The Islands." The cupcake menu featured:

 Chocolate Curry with Chocolate Ganache Frosting

Champagne with Mimosa (Orange and Champagne) Frosting

 Coconut Cream with Coconut Lime Frosting 

West Indian Black/ Fruit Cake with Vanilla Frosting

and a Classic Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Frosting- Topper- (since we're in the US after all... lol)

In the past few months I have been hearing so much talk about chocolate curry cupcakes.  And since I had some of Trinidad's finest Madras Curry on hand (thanks Mom!) I whipped up my own concoction of the increasingly popular, exotic flavor. (If you're not familiar with Madras Curry, let's just say it's curry... with a nice kick to it for those of like it hot!)

Since cocoa plants are popular in the West Indies (and I was looking out for the chocoholic wedding guests :)) I thought that it was time to try my first chocolate ganache to top the chocolate curry cakes. The ganache frosting was a little runnier than I wanted it to be for two reasons:

1. I may have over heated the heavy cream

2. It was so yummy that when I was piping it on the cakes right out of the fridge -it was a nice firm consistency at this point- I may have swirled on too much. So by the time it was at room temperature there were little decadent chocolate streams... (Heaven for chocolate lovers!) Beside getting their fingers a little dirty I didn't see anyone complaining.

Next were the Champagne cupcakes which were awesome and definitely got some great reviews (even thought there was no alcohol.) I used my standard vanilla cupcake recipe and replaced the vanilla flavoring with Champagne flavoring.  Since Mimosas are a popular drink made with Champagne, and oranges are popular in the Caribbean I could not think of a better frosting to experiment with...  I mixed orange rind and orange marmalade with champagne flavoring to make a smooth tart but sweet buttercream.  

And there you have it!

Here's to the newlyweds and all the fun I had putting it together! Cheers!