Making lots of Rudolph cupcakes!

I’ve never done a cupcake tree before, and I got it into my head this year that I’d like to do one for Robert’s FM department Christmas party.  There’s over 120 employees that attend.  That’s a lot of cupcakes, but when I broke it down into manageable chunks it didn’t seem so scary.  I had a lot of fun last year making a themed Christmas Cake, but I wanted to see what I could manage this year with little individual cakes.

Unlike last year, I didn’t have the help from Latham, who was tied up in school activities.  So I baked the cupcakes a couple of weeks before and froze them.  Icing can easily be prepared a week in advance, and I spent a couple of weeks sourcing all the various candy embellishments that I needed for the designs I chose.

The day before, I sat down with everything and started the production line.

There was about three dozen melting snowmen, at least a dozen Rudolfs, fluffy Christmas sheep, iced candy canes, Christmas present bows (and a number of other designs) that needed to be pumped out.  It was fun but — as always — more time consuming than planned.  It took 5-6 hours to get all of them finished and packed up for transportation the next day.  Just getting the cakes down in the lift to the car was a production.

Here’s the final result:

I think it went over very well at the party.  (But note to self:  Learn from the last two years!  Frosting and candy do not mix well with 80 degree heat, no matter how well I think I’m transporting them in AC-controlled conditions.  The second they get out into the humidity everything starts sliding apart!)  Next Christmas we’ll be in Nepal in cool weather, so  problem solved I guess…