Help! How To Transport And Decorate 150 Mini Cakes For A Wedding!
Decorating By andreagopp Updated 21 Mar 2017 , 10:22pm by kakeladi
So I am making 150 minicakes for a wedding. They will be about the size of a cupcake. 50 of them will be covered in a chocolate buttercream with a ganache dripping. 100 will be covered in buttercream. I am not sure how you transport them. The bride will be picking them up and driving them about 10 hours. My concerns are as follows:
1. What do I put them on? Unlike cupcakes, they don't have a liner. So how do I make sure they don't dry out on the bottom and what do I put them on? If I put them in a cake box with cardboard underneath they will dry out. But If I line them with say, parchment, will they slip all over the place and run into eachother? What about using a doiley?
2. For my ganache ones: is there a particular ganache recipe that hardens well and doesn't melt as easy as others? I am worried that if they stop and get out of the car for 30 minutes that the ganache will melt into a mess.
My other option is just to make 3 sheet cakes instead of 150 mini cakes. I just feel like sheet cakes are not a impressive and then they would have to cut and serve instead of just serve. Plus, if I do the mini cakes I can bake them now, freeze the layers and just stack and frost on the day of delivery. Opinions? Thoughts?
If the cakes are "sealed" by the bc or ganache to the bottom board, they will not dry out.
You likely will need tiny base cardboards, like these http://www.bakedeco.com/detail.asp?id=3689&trng=fgle&gclid=Cj0KEQjw-73GBRCC7KODl9zToJMBEiQAj1Jgf3CuPeK66podiTVKICIbGVx06nhu95N6_MKzcmeHt-8aAqIk8P8HAQ
Just make sure you're charging enough. Without knowing where you are, I'd estimate these little buggers to be worth $8-$15 each. You will not believe what a PITA they are.
Leah-
I am making these for a family member as my wedding gift to them. So I am not charging. Would it be better to just make sheet cakes? I am by no means a professional baker. The bride is the sweetest girl ever and completely okay with whatever I choose to do. I am nervous about sheet cakes just because I have never decorated one before and I am unsure of how to make it look nice. But would it be easier to transport sheet cakes? You seem to know what you are talking about!
Put them in a sheet cake box lined with a non skid mat and they won't slide around. Sometimes cake boxes can be flimsy, so I would put cardboard at the bottom, then the mat, so the box doesn't "give" when you pick it up. Mini cakes can be difficult to work with because they are so small! If you bake now, and freeze, will you have enough time to do 150 the day of delivery?
I bake and transport large numbers of cupcakes and mini cupcakes. I have found that I always get a good result by transporting them in foil steam table pans with lids. They fit snugly in the pans if you put them side by side, the pan sides are high enough to accommodate raised icing and they stay very moist. If you use the bottom boards then the sides shouldn't touch. The problem they will have regardless of how you package them is that the frostings you want to use will melt if the car gets warm. Perhaps a very large cooler for transport? I like the idea of mini cakes instead of sheet cakes but they will be more difficult to manage. That's a lot of decorating!
I have been a professional cake maker for over 10 years and you would have to pay me at least $15/ea to do an order like that. I beg you, take the sheet cake route.
I did 300 cupcakes for my sons wedding used heavy duty sheet cake boxes I purchased from local bakery worked great could stack them without worry
I did 300 cupcakes for my sons wedding used heavy duty sheet cake boxes I purchased from local bakery worked great could stack them without worry
I did 300 cupcakes for my sons wedding used heavy duty sheet cake boxes I purchased from local bakery worked great could stack them without worry
Transporting in boxes is not really a problem. There are many solutions. The cakes will be OK.
Temperature IS a problem. Cakes must stay cool and out of the sun. A bad road trip can kill them, especially if the drivers don't consider the fragile/ delicate cargo.
The REAL problem is decorating 150 mini cakes! Like it has been said, that IS a real problem. A cupcake is a 3 seconds swirl of icing with a 1M tip. Mini cakes, not so much. You say you are not a professional baker, and "mini cakes I can bake them now, freeze the layers and just stack and frost on the day of delivery" is NOT really how they are done. You need to ice the sides to seal in the moisture--- at THAT is the time killer.
Try a trial run of 10 mini cakes and just time the assembly and decorating time. You may be unpleasantly surprised.
For a wedding, a "cutting cake" that is fancy, decorated and displayed on a pedestal may well take the place of a table of sheet cakes. Sheet cakes are kept in the kitchen and served directly to the tables. For the photos, it is just the cutting cake.
BTW, when I read the original post for your thread here, I popped on to see....."What factory pumped out 150 mini cakes?" I was so impressed with anyone tackling that crazy an order, I had to see "what was up". The thought of it is still freaking me out...lol
I did a 4 inch smash cake for my daughter and wanted to quit. They are a pain. No matter what I did, it wouldn't stay on the board. It slid across the table many times. I finally got it done, but it took way longer than I thought. I definitely agree with doing a trial run first. 1 was enough. I couldn't imagine doing 150 of them.
Thanks so much everyone for the advice! After reading all the comments I think I should go the sheet cake route! You all have saved me from what would have surely proved to be a stressful endeavor. (plus I am 7 mo. pregnant and have 3 other kids ages 6 and under) I would have started the process, been halfway in and melted down into a puddle of icing and hormones. One last question: Should I score the sheet cakes to make sure that they don't cut pieces too big and run out of cake?
no, don't score them -- let others do that -- one layer sheets are cut 2x2 -- easy peasy -- it's not difficult -- if you are seven months pregnant with three small munchkins already -- geez pick up the phone and order a couple sheets from sam's or costco ten hours away where the ceremony is so y'all don't have to risk letting them melt on the way --
go put your feet up somewhere -- seriously
You mention you don't know how to decorate sheet cakes. Go on google and look up 'decorated sheet cakes'. If you want you can add 'on cakecentral' and/or use the 'image' finder element of the search.
There are many many different ways to go. Here's a few I have done. They may not have been made for a wedding but the decoration idea are good for that purpose: Well, that's wierd!! I have tried to 'copy & paste' the links to my individual pictures and each time I get someone's facebook replie entitled "Dear Rise" :( :( I don't even go on facebook so I don't know how such a thing can happen!
But you can go to any of the pictures on here and get some ideas.
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