make your own cupcakes

TBH there's undreds of new cupcake makers out there desperate for business and to prove themselves.

You should be able to find some at cost if you look hard enough.

My sil is making ours and has just had a succsessful first run - keeping it simple with vanilla, lemon and chocolate flavours.

Live seen in tesco there's loads of ready made icing & decorations to finish them off and you can also buy lots on amazon.

My other sil makes big birthday cakes as a sideline and she says it's fine to batch bake and then freeze ready to decorate nearer the time but have a trial run first.

Hi. I have frozen cakes successfully before - a trial run is definitely the way forward. I know making your own is cheaper but consider the time it takes to do them - you don't want to be decorating them really close to the wedding - youre likely to have loads of last minute jobs to do. If you live in the NW of England I know someone that does seriously amazing cakes for sensible prices and can highly recommend her.

If you are doing your own the couple of tips I can give you are - invest in good quality cupcake cases (the thicker ones give a really professional finish compared to eg some of the supermarket ones). I always have the cases in cupcake trays too to keep a nice shape. I got mine from the bay of e. Decorations I found edible glitter cheapest online. B and M and Home Bargains (don't know if you know these shops) have some excellent basic decs too. The lady I mentioned above (and sometimes Groupon) do cup cake decorating classes - you could do this as part of a hen do .

Good luck!

We're making ours; my brother is a chef and is doing all the baking. He's very excited!

Do you honestly want to be icing cupcakes the night before your wedding to save a few ££?

Have you thought about M&S - 48 cupcakes for £48?

Thanks all. got daughters third and first birthdays pre weddong so good trial runs. found some pretty squires kitchen cases to match cprnflower blue and butterfly scheme. i know am a bit mad but anything i can do mself id like to. will make in advance and pipe toppings day before. family friend can do sugar craft so will ask her to do fiddly bits.

I would recommend that you buy the icing ready made so it saves you time as you just have to pipe it! You can by it in supermarkets and I have used it in vanilla, strawberry and chocolate flavours before. If you keep an eye out it occasionally goes onto special offer so you might have able to get it in advance and keep it. It is not too expensive though - I used it last week and did just over 50 cakes from 2 tubs.

Don't buy ready made icing - it really won't taste as nice and buttercream only takes 10mins to make! My best tip is keep it simple in design and get a good tip from Lakeland/Hobbycraft/elsewhere which creates a good swirl. You can't go wrong and they'll look super professional! They can be baked and iced up to three days before and put in a airtight container. Why not get a friend and ice together?!

My mum is gonna help and for birthdays have managed to make reasonably professional looking ones in terms of piping icing on top. we will probs make icing night before morning before wedding and get them done first thing on the friday morning so have time for bit of pampering and final touches of everything else. Gonna take the week off and marquee comes on the thursday so fingers crossed should be ok! Thanks all for advice xxx

I made my own cupcakes and quite enjoyed it. I baked them the weekend before the wedding, froze them straightaway then defrosted overnight on the Thursday. I decorated them on Friday and kept them in airtight boxes for the wedding on Saturday.

I did After Eight, Chocolate Orange, Lemon and Coffee flavours. I used ready made chocolate frosting and added mint and orange flavours for the choc ones to save a little time, and then made my own lemon and coffee buttercreams.

Everyone said I was mad giving myself all the extra work to save a few quid, but I love baking and actually found it quite therapeutic. And it cost half as much as getting someone else (cheap) to do it,including the cost of the stand, wrappers etc. If you need stands, there are plenty or round & square acrylic ones (Classikool) on eBay which are really easy to use.

I was lucky at a boot fair, managed to get a wedding acrylics stand for 120 cupcakes for a bargain £8 was chuffed with my bargain buy!

Do you reckon would be ok to put them in cupcake boxes rather than airtight containers once decorated? So could defrost as you did on Thursday and put in airtight containers then decorate Fri morning and put in the cupcake tray boxes like you get on ebay? Think they fit 24, dykwim?

Also, quick q what did you do when freezing / defrosting? In containers on took them out to defrost?

Thanks guys, getting v excited about this!

If they are the cardboard sort of cupcake boxes then they won't be airtight- I was a bit worried about that as I'd planned to use those, so I just stuck with plastic storage boxes. However- the boxes I had weren't properly airtight, so I planned to seal them with strong tape (which I guess you could do with the cupcake boxes), but forgot! They definitely got some exposure to the air over 24 hours, but the cakes were well covered with buttercream which I think may have protected them as they hadn't dried out.

I froze my cakes in quite large ziplock freezer bags, which held 12 large-ish cakes in a single layer so they were flat and not squashed. I just took them out of the freezer and left them in the bags until defrosted and ready to decorate. They were as good as new when defrosted.

Ah freezer bags, like it, much easier than taking up whole freezer with tupperware. Perfect.

Yep mean the cardboard ones. Just worried about finding enough tupperware to house 150 cupcakes and obviously once iced can't stack. Might buy one cardboard one and use in trial go and see if they come out ok.

Thanks again

Sealing the cardboard ones with some decent tape might be an idea, but yes maybe do a trial run, pop some in a cupcake box and see how they are after 24-36 hours.

I used some gigantic boxes, and some wire basket-type creations to create shelf-type things within the boxes. It worked perfectly in my head but the reality was not so straightforward ? For that number of cupcakes keeping the packing compact would be much better.

I am making my own cake - but cupcakes are to fiddly to be doing anywhere near the wedding and didnt want the stress.

A fruitcake can be made well in advance, and decorated a month beforehand, so plenty of time to redo. I know not everyone likes fruitcake - so i am also making a few cakes (vanila, lemon, carrot) which will be served on the day also.

I love baking and my brother will be doing most of the work, so I'll be the one decorating! I'm quite organised, few days before the wedding and the last thing to do is the cupcakes, so there's no stress.