Truck, Flower and Heart Cupcakes

Recently I was asked by a family friend to make 48 cupcakes for her son's fifth birthday to share with his class. I was quite excited at my first real "order", and forty-eight cupcakes is quite the order! I had never made that many at once before, but really it is just two batches of twenty-four. I only have two pans and so much oven space, so I had to bake them separately, which also allowed me to make two different flavors. The only real guidelines I was given for this order was that I was given the muffin cups to use, white with hearts, sort of Valentine-themed, which also came with toothpicks to stick in the cupcakes: trucks, flowers, and hearts. The set was quite cute. The cupcakes also had to be peanut free. Well, I like to know exactly what I am doing, and would actually prefer specific instructions, no matter how bossy it may seem. I am known to ask a minimum of ten questions when someone asks me to bake something. I need the details.

I settled on half chocolate cupcakes and half vanilla. I also settled on half chocolate frosting and half vanilla. So in the end I had: 12 chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting, 12 chocolate cupcakes with white frosting, 12 white cupcakes with chocolate frosting, and 12 white cupcakes with white frosting. I nice variety, I think.
I also had 16 truck toothpicks, 16 flower toothpicks, and 16 heart toothpicks. So after baking and frosting the cupcakes, I decided to decorate them according to the toothpick themes; trucks, flowers, and hearts. 

Trucks: Orange buttercream piped with an upside-down basket weave tip in four straight lines, two long and two short. Chocolate fudge frosting piped with an open round tip for tires. 

Flowers: Chocolate fudge frosting piped with an open round tip for centers. Blue Buttercream piped with an open round tip in five circles for petals.

Hearts: Pink buttercream piped with an open round tip in two halves. 




Here they are with the decorative toothpicks.