I love dessert. Truly, love is not quite strong enough a word for my feelings about all things sweet. So while I knew I wanted a real, tiered, pretty cake at my wedding, I also knew that that alone wasn't gonna cut it. I toyed with the idea of a candy buffet, but really my love leans more toward chocolate than hard candies, and I was afraid chocolate candy would melt at our afternoon outdoor wedding. Browsing wedding sites online, I ran across the pure awesomeness of a cookie buffet and immediately began scheming to make this happen. I had grand plans of each close relative baking a batch of cookies, collecting them on one buffet table at the wedding, and passing out family recipes to all the guests. My mouth watered at the thought of multitudes of cookies: chocolate chip, chocolate-chocolate, peanut butter, oatmeal raisin...
Oh, hi there. Sorry, I got lost in cookie dreams. What was I saying? Oh yes, the plans. So. I told my mom my cookie-madness plan and she not-so-helpfully pointed out that the majority of our guests (all of my family included) were going to be travelling 500+ miles to get to the wedding. Meaning that they would not have access to kitchens in which to concoct these freshly homemade cookies. Sigh. This totally put the kibosh on my cookie buffet plans, as I had no desire to single-handedly bake hundreds and hundreds of cookies right before the wedding.
Enter my amazing sister: She was at Barnes and Noble (our mutual favorite store) looking through wedding books, because she's awesome like that, when she came across the best.favor.ever: cupcakes in mason jars. Um, hello perfection. Have I mentioned that mason jars play a major role in the wedding's decor? Perhaps I neglected to mention that. But when she told me about this, I knew we had found the answer to my sweet-tooth dilemma. And she's so awesome that she also volunteered to bake all of these 100 cupcakes herself. I know, I can't believe it either.
So, two days before the wedding, while I was still chained to my desk at work, my sister and my mom got down to the business of baking favors for my wedding. They used boxed cake mix and baked them directly into the 4oz. mason jars I had bought online for less than $1 apiece (including shipping). My sister, who's an amateur-ish cake baker, made homemade buttercream frosting in yellow to top them with. I have no idea what goes into making buttercream frosting from scratch, but let me tell you the results are truly ahhh-mazing.
My boss was nice enough to let me leave work early that Friday so I was able to join them for the last half of the baking extravaganza. When I got to my sister's house I was greeted with dozens and dozens of chocolate cupcakes in mason jars...pure heaven. I rolled up my sleeves to get to work, but I'm sort of hopeless in the crafting department so my main contribution was in taking pictures. Behold, cupcake-favor fest 2010:
Cupcakes in jars, pre-frosting. Already looking yummy!
My mother the saint: cleaning up the sides of the jars to make them prettier. I would never have thought to do that.
My awesome sister piping (yellow, homemade!) buttercream frosting onto the cupcakes. Did I mention she's awesome?
Nom nom nom!
About half of the finished cupcakes, tied with their mini forks and all. Just waiting for the wedding day!
This project was insanely time-consuming for my two favorite ladies, and it ended up being one of my very favorite details of the whole wedding. I still can't believe how sweet they are for spending their entire day on this.
After the baking madness was over, my parents, sister, brother-in-law and I had an early dinner at Chipotle (yummy, filling, and quick!) and then I called it a night and headed home to get some rest. The next day we had a bridesmaid luncheon and mani/pedis scheduled, followed by a dinner party for all of our out-of-town guests at my sister's house. This was going to be the last night I spent at home in my own bed until after the honeymoon and I wanted to enjoy it. Jeff was at work, so I took a bath, watched bad TV, and packed my bags for the next few days. This was it, the last night of normalcy for a long time. The wedding weekend had officially arrived!
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