Another DIY Cupcake Resource

Back in June, Laura told us that she was contemplating making her own wedding cupcakes, and y’all stepped up to the plate with some great technical advice. The help that’s harder to offer, however, is the creative kind. Text is simply not the best delivery system for artistic advice.

Photo by Ed Rudolf and Krystina Castella

Pictures and diagrams, on the other hand, are worth thousands of words. I recently received my copy of Crazy About Cupcakes and started baking with it. All I can say is YUM. The recipes and directions are easy to follow, and you’re not going to encounter any ingredients that are impossible to find — my only criticism is that the recipes don’t tell you how many cupcakes or how much frosting you’re going to get. Other than that, these are definitely beginner’s cupcakes. Yes, my cupcakes sometimes look a little gimpy, but I’m okay with that.

You can test run wedding cupcake ideas and recipes by Krystina Castella, the author of Crazy About Cupcakes, at her similarly named web site. There you’ll find a whole bunch of recipes, some discussion of technique, and a handful of decorating how-twos that are a few steps above “smear frosting on the tops” but not nearly as complicated as “make a fondant basketweave.”

Why wedding cupcakes, not wedding cake? First, you don’t have to worry about sizing a wedding cake based on the number of guests. One cupcake per person — and maybe a few extra just in case — should suffice. Second, weight is no longer an issue. Tiered wedding cakes can collapse under their own weight unless you’re using the right recipe, while cupcakes stand tall even when you’re stacking a smaller one on top of a bigger one.

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