Cupcakes - how far in advance can they be made?

We will be getting ours from m&s (£3 a box, so in total will cost around £120-£150) as none of my family are particularly fab on the baking front (apart from my gran, who is doing us a fruit cake to cut)

we've already been in our local m&s to ask them nicely if they could order a bit more the week before our wedding, and they have been VERY helpful. if all else fails, then waitrose also do boxes of 4 cupcakes for £3 so we'll just have to buy out all our local supplies!

sorry i can't help on the home baking front... domestic goddess i am not.

Hi

when i make them i usually make them a day or 2 before they are needed and find that as long as they are stored in an airtight container they last a couple of days after what i made them for (if that makes sense)

HTH

I bake cupcakes quite a lot, they'll usually last 2 or 3 days in an airtight container. Just don't put them in the fridge. It depends what you're icing them with too - if it's butter icing it'll need to be on the day as the icing needs to be kept in the fridge, but fondant icing you can do before hand.

You can make them a couple of days before but make sure that you put them in airtight containers to make sure that they are nice and fresh and quite cool especially if iced.

Thanks for your replies girls. Am having a re-think as I was hoping to use buttercream but if I've got to do it that morning....ho hum.

BW - thanks for your suggestion of M&S and Waitrose. I have a feeling they are going to become my best friends....

HI there

I agree with what all the others have said. Some weeks we make hundreds of cup cakes so it's not possible, even with our large ovens and people working full-time, to make them all the day before the wedding. We keep them fresh in air tight containers and cover/ice and decorate them as close to the day as possible, ideally the day before the wedding. Once covered it's important that they are not kept in airtight containers, especially if they are covered with sugarpaste as it will cause them to sweat and any decorations you have added may go soft and colours may run/bleed. Once covered we keep them in cardboard cake boxes at cool room temperature (not refrigerated) until they go on display.

The only thing I would add is that they stay fresh longer if you use good quality cake cases. If you use the thin white or coloured paper ones we find that they go stale a lot quicker than if you use the foil ones (silver, gold and lots of other colours these days). The foil ones are a lot thicker than the paper ones.

HTH
Catherine