phillyfoodie.com - In praise of wedding cupcakes

April 26, 2010

In praise of wedding cupcakes

Hey, folks, I’m back! Super tan (ok, not really), super rested, and married! Before I jump back in to our regularly scheduled posts, now complete with stand mixer (ooey gooey butter cake, prepare to fall before me), I wanted to share one of the smarter choices, besides the groom of course, I thought I made for the wedding. It’s cupcakes.

I know that cupcakes are a wedding supertrend, but I’m here to tell you, it’s not just because it’s cute or Martha Stewart features them on her cover. I am nothing if not practical, and there are several logical reasons for choosing cupcakes over a traditional wedding cake. Your experience may vary, but, in general:

1. It’s cheaper. Wedding cake tends to start at $1.50 a slice for the very basic options, and go up from there. And it can go up fast. The average expenditure on wedding cake is $543. The most expensive quote I got was $150 less than that, and we ended up spending under $200, total.

2. They’re fresher. It makes sense. A big elaborate cake takes time to bake, put together, and decorate. That means the base, the cake, had to be made a couple of days earlier. Cupcakes are little, and cool quickly, so they’re just fresher!

3. More flavors = more happy. We had 5 flavors of cupcakes — vanilla with vanilla buttercream, chocolate with chocolate ganache, chocolate with vanilla buttercream, chocolate with peanut butter, and red velvet. Additional cost for variety? $0. Ease of selecting your chosen flavor? High. Additional happiness from this? Priceless.

4. You don’t have to think about what your cake is going to look like. You may think this sounds silly, and if dreams of weddings bring to mind spectacular visions of fondant, this may not hold true for you. But if your imagined response to a baker saying, “what should it look like?” is, “I don’t know; I just want it to taste good,” then cupcakes are a great choice for you.

5. No cutting, no waiting, just eating. You’re at a wedding. It’s time to cut the cake, yay! The cutting happens. Then, the cake gets wheeled away, and the music starts up again, and 20 minutes later, cake appears at your seat, or on a table in the corner, and if you aren’t looking for it, you may very well miss it. Let’s get real, actually eating the cake is frequently an afterthought to looking at the cake. This seems weird to me — it’s food, not an ice sculpture! With cupcakes, you take a bite of cake, then tell everyone else to come on down. The cupcakes were half gone within 5 minutes.

6. They can be easily weaponized. Let’s say someone shouts out, “Smash it in her face!” (Yes, this happened.) You can throw a cupcake at said person. (This did not, but it could have. Watch out, Melissa.)

We got our cupcakes from the cupcake truck. Bryan took care of ordering them, and said it was delightfully easy. They just showed up, complete with stand, and they were a huge hit. I had two red velvets, so I thought they were the most popular, but I’ve gotten props on the vanilla/vanillas and the chocolate/peanut butters, too. Sadly, no one saw them being delivered, so I missed my chance to get a picture taken with the truck. Ah well. Maybe for our 10th anniversary or something.