Next Sunday I'm doing my first market stall. I'm planning to make 150 cupcakes and about 50 cookies.

Today I've baked 30 cookies, which turned out okay...

I made a big batch of royal icing. it flopped. I'm using actiwhite, (im in south africa) and i followed a recipe from sweetsugarbelle's blog. Instead of taking 7 or 8 minutes to get to stiff peaks, it took 30 seconds. so i had wasted a kg of icing sugar. I found somewhere online that with actiwhite, 1 tsp of actiwhite + 2tsp water = 1 egg white. So I tried joy of bakings royal icing recipe but followed the recipe for using egg whites and just subbed in the actiwhite. That seemed to start working better, i got all excited! then 10 minutes later when i had left a little splodge on the counter, i saw that it hadnt set. it went a bit crumbly again like the 1st batch. so thats my RI problem.

I decided to do a practise batch of 24 vanilla cupcakes, to see how it works when i put 2 trays in my oven in 1 go. They tasted great, but some were burnt on the bottom and some were just weird. because my oven is weird. I then tried doing the poured fondant thing and also dipping them in white chocolate ganache. not working. as much as i tried to let the excess drip off, it carried on dripping when i put it down.

the kitchen is a mess.

I am losing the will to live I am so frustrated!!!!!!!

How do people baking 100+ cupcakes???

Practice makes perfect is an old adage. Usually, people who bake quantity have some experience. Not many folks are as enthusiastic as you are and jump right into the large quantity bakes. I suggest you start with smaller quantities and work out the kinks. Then baking 500 cupcakes will be a piece of cake. (Another old adage.)

Many people have weird ovens. Most ovens have hot spots so we must compensate by rotating pans - half-way through the bake cycle, turn your pans around and switch racks. That should help.

Good luck, keep baking, revive that will to live!

katefarquharson~~I agree 100% with MimiFix. (By the way, MimiFix is an expert on all things quantity and Farmer's Markets. She has written some books that may prove very helpful to you if this is something you wish to pursue as a full- or part-time business venture.)

Since you are in South Africa, many of the recipes and ingredients that are available in the USA may not be available. Additionally, if you are converting from USA recipes to metric, you should triple-check all of the conversions to make sure that all the amounts are correct.

Perhaps if you decide on no more than 2 or 3 items/designs for the Farmer's Market, you can spend the time getting each of those 2 or 3 things "just right".

and as Mimi said, "Good luck, keep baking, revive that will to live!"

Thank you so much!!

I am rethinking completely. I am going to get some different racks for my oven (because i only have weird roasting-pan-like things and one normal wire rack). which is obviously part of the problem!

I'm sticking with 3 flavours, baking more of the ones that don't require decorating, which will leave me more time for the other decorations.

I'm abandoning the poured fondant and all the dipping stuff, I just haven't practised it enough, which as you say is super important. Maybe next time

Going to stick with the good old buttercream swirls just adding some different flavours like cinnamon and combine the white chocolate ganache too so I don't waste it!

As hard as it is for me, I'm going to bring in some help! So i'm feeling a lot better about the whole thing

Thanks so much!

Happy to hear you are in a much better frame of mind!

We'd love to see some photos of your final buttercream swirl cupcakes.