Where to even begin…..the beginning? So, we got word the 2010 LA Cupcake Challenge was coming up and immediately we began to plot on our flavors and presentation. We originally had an idea to coordinate one of our flavors with The Real Housewives of Orange County. We were able to get in contact with Jo De La Rosa and put our efforts in to full swing. We pitched our idea to her and it didn’t quite fit her personality and who she is today. She was super sweet and we all came up with another idea in order to incorporate a little bit of who she is and combine it with our yummy cupcakes. Thus the “Two Parts,” one part “naughty,” one part “nice” was born. We came up with flavors that we thought were representative of both “parts”.

Our “naughty” cupcake was our chocolate covered strawberry, a rich chocolate cupcake topped with fresh strawberry buttercream, sprinkled with fresh cut strawberry pieces and then we dipped that little sucker in chocolate (although we were running out of time the day of and some ended up with just a dollop of chocolate as opposed to the dip). Our “nice” cupcake was what we call the Vanilla Throwback, which was basically a play on my all time favorite cupcake growing up….rainbow chip. It is a moist vanilla cupcake infused with vanilla bean, topped with our vanilla bean icing with rainbow chips mixed in (ahhh…the memories of my first grade cupcakes). Fun right? Well, we didn’t stop there. Michele from Kitchen Couture who has created a line of aprons to be sold exclusively through our site (*coming soon) designed the cutest apron to go along with our theme…it was of course reversible with one part reflecting the “naughty” side and one the “nice”. Wait, there’s more…Alison from Sugar Cat Studio designed some super cute wrappers for our cupcakes too (1,400 to be exact!!!).

Speaking of the 1,400 wrappers, we also did our trademark toothpick toppers…that’s one for each of the 1,400 cupcakes we made. Let’s do the math here…1,400 toothpicks, double sided= 2,800 cirles that need to be printed and cut out…glued together and then this year we decided to add some bling, that’s 1,400 mini pearls/black rhinestones glued to each topper…yikes! We made 3 stands for each of the two flavors which were adorned in the same fabrics/embellishments as the apron and wrappers. It was a lot of time consuming and tedious work, but we loved how it turned out!

The week leading up to the event all three of my little ones were sick, so it was in and out of urgent care all week long (as they could not all just get sick the same day…had to be every other day to keep me on my toes ) Needless to say between family life and business it was a crazy week. The night before my husband tended to the kiddos while my sister finished up last minute details, and I headed off to the kitchen to start baking. Start time: 10:00 p.m. …finish time, literally to the wire…1:00 p.m. I had not realized how long it was going to take to dip each of those cupcakes…eeeek! So, about half of them missed their dip in the chocolate pool and were drizzled instead. Lesson learned. Oh, and…all our our liners began to peel away from the cupcakes, at that point there was really nothing I could do about it. I have to be honest…it looked so awful I was ready to throw in the towel. I thought about everyone that had contributed and realized quitting was not an option. Then, I remembered we had those gorgeous wrappers from Sugar Cat Studio and they would disguise the flaw! I headed home, we loaded up, I kissed the girls and we were on our way (2 hrs later than planned). I had planned on getting there extra early to choose a good spot and have everything up and ready well before the doors opened….oh well.

We arrived and parked in between Fairy Cakes Bakery and Meringue bakeshop. I was thrilled with our spot because I follow them both on twitter and had been wanting to meet them. So far, so good. We started assembling our display and quickly realized it was taking much longer than planned. We were still putting out cupcakes when everyone started rolling in. It was so busy. I don’t remember last year being such a mad dash. We were a lot closer to the door this year, so I think that may have had something to do with it. Feedback was great and I’ll admit I was very nervous this year, much more so than last year. When it’s your first go around, no one really expects anything…we had been in business for only 3 months, so if we hadn’t placed, it’s not like anyone would notice. This year we have lots more customers and cupcake pals, so the pressure was definitely on. I just decided I would not let the pressure get to me…we had a fun theme going and just wanted to have a good time. I finally met all these people I felt were friends due to our connections on Facebook and twitter…Elise: The Cupcake Activist and hubby, Nichelle from Cupcakes Take The Cake (Rachel was there too but I didn’t have the privilege of meeting her), all the participants, my neighbors Kerena and Kristen, and lots of facebook fans. It was really pretty neat.

The cutest Two Parts Sugar fans ever

I am now realizing as crazy as this event is for all of us bakers participating, I love it! It is so much fun to meet other people as passionate about this business as we are. All the attendees are awesome and so friendly I can’t say enough good things about everyone attending. And, I have to tell you this is definitely a group effort….I couldn’t have pulled it all together without the help of my hubby running to get me all the last minute things I needed and for being SO patient…My genius of a brother for all of his creative ideas…My sister (coworker) for all the tedious details she helped finalize…My mom for helping me with the girls and keeping me sane…Michele from Kitchen Couture and Alison from Sugar Cat Studio for really pulling the whole look of our display together. YOU GUYS ROCK! All in all we had a blast and can’t wait until next year!

I also want to personally apologize for not delivering on our special guest Jo De La Rosa….We literally found out on our way to the event she was not going to be able to make it due to personal reasons. We appreciate her participation and wish her all the best.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 at 10:35 pm and is filed under cupcakes, events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.