Today I immersed myself in the kitchen. With the efficiency of much practice, 3 bakers fired up the kitchen and starting making the neighborhood smell delicious while outside the sun rose (or rather, the earth turned and NW Portland turned to view the star). I stumbled in at what I thought to be an early 7:50, only to find everyone already in the middle of frosting, scooping, mixing, and sprinkling. 

I was tasked with scooping the dots for Belmont for tomorrow (Saturday). They get baked and frosted today, put into bins, and driven over tomorrow. That meant 11 trays of vanilla, 3 toffee, 3 big top, 12 chocolate, 3 carrot, and 4 red velvet. Now with each tray fitting 24 cupcakes, that makes (thank you Apple, for having an awesome calculator on the ever handy iPhone) 36 trays, or 864 dot cupcakes. Yeah, that's a lot. And being the amateur that I am, it took time and (of course) mistakes. Vanilla went well, I scooped and after 8 trays they were ready for the oven:

This is one of 4 ovens, all the same size, and they all fit 8 trays of cupcakes at a time. Imagine cooking (8x24x4=) 128 cupcakes at a time! 

Anyway, my scooped vanilla trays went in the giant oven all goopy and raw and came out with rounded tops, and lightly golden. Perfect! Chocolate on the other hand has a mind of its own and doesn't want to be confined in little cubby holes. It went in the oven goopy and raw and during the baking journey, some had crawled out of the perfectly sized dimple and wandered across the tray. Luckily, not all of my overfilled trays had gone through the baking machine and I got the chance to take a teaspoon and meticulously lower the amount of batter in the trays and even everything out. No more great escapes!

Scooping got me through to lunch, and a after I came back it was time for me to become intimately involved with the construction of a cupcakes main sweetening factor: the frosting. Now due to the secrecy of the Saint Cupcake recipes, I can't go into detail but I can say that when I made the vanilla buttercream, I needed 22 pounds and 8 ounces of powdered sugar! As big as the mixer is:

it couldn't contain all of the sugar as the giant mixing paddle whipped and mixed, and the trash can now (well, after I swept) holds a rather significant amount of powdered sugar. Mixing the ingredients together was made pretty easy by the mixer, but scraping the sides and bottom was an event in itself as I immersed my arms, literally up to my elbows in partially made buttercream, to catch any lumps of butter. With help from the more experienced Morgan to tell when the vat of buttercream was perfectly whipped, I stopped the mixer and scraped the finished product into two 6 quart bins and made my first mark on Saint Cupcake!

Vanilla Buttercream. Margaret Clement. May 14.

And lastly, an update one my long term goal. Today I went for the Fat Elvis (pictured below), a chocolate chip banana poundcake with peanut butter fudge and a banana chip garnish. I will admit hesitancy, I'm not much for peanut butter fudge. But the overall effect was so good I think it might be a new favorite of mine! Although nothing will top the red velvet. Nothing.

Next up, I brave the chocolate vegan cupcake.