OK, this is a for-instance question to all you pro cupcake bakers out there.

If you have several orders to make in one morning, how do you tell them apart in order for the right flavor to go to the right customer?

I have been contemplating getting or making blank picks for all my flavors, and writing the flavor in after they have baked, or using magnets with the names written stuck to each pan, or using different colors of liners for each flavor, but I don't want to carry 20 different colors of them.

So, how do you do it? I want your advice. Thanks in advance.

After you stand over them and worry over them, you are intimately involved with your cupcake. It's like having twins... you just know. Mine smell and bake differently... even chocolates. But any process of labeling would work. I like the toothpick with a flag. I keep decorative electrical style tape at the bakery to write on containers with a Sharpie.

I borrowed this trick form dim sum houses - they put a different colored dot on top of all the different steamed buns they make so they can tell which is which.

So I modified it and use colored sugars to sprinkle on the tops to color-code similar-looking cupcakes to keep straight. I do this if I have a wedding and they want all white wrappers, but want, say, coconut cake and vanilla cake. Hard to tell the difference when you are in a hurry and you have 300 of them. So the vanilla cakes I sprinkled a tiny bit of light pink sugar on the very tops before they go in the oven. The sugar melts into the cake when it bakes and leaves just a few colored specks that nobody notices.

I also do this if I'm recipe testing - I'll sprinkle a little purple sugar on the batch I made with all egg whites. Red sugar on the batch with all egg yolks, etc. That way I can keep track of which batch is which and compare them easier.

That is an amazing idea FromScratch!! Would have never thought of that. I was going to say, if I am baking cupcakes that look the same (like vanilla and almond), I will just poke holes in the top of the vanilla ones when they come out of the oven, and not on the almond ones. But I also will transfer them to trays when cool, and i will wrap in saran (if freezing) and then I just write in the saran in sharpie.

I use a bit of masking tape on the pan with the name abbreviation written on it. If it needs to come out of the pan, it goes in a bin and the label can transfer.

If I had the same 10 to bake all the time I would probably come up with a color coded system, but we tend to bake very different stuff each week (all pre-ordered) so something less formal works better.

fromscratchsf, I LOVE this idea, and I have a ton of sugar colors I got on sale that I will use for just this purpose. I will also incorporate the masking tape idea from koryak, thanks for the idea. I really didn't want to buy several dozen magnets, and masking tape is really cheap. Thank you both for these great ideas, I knew I could get the answers I was looking for.

Have a great evening.

Sonya