Luna's Cupcake: My First Order!

On March 7th, one of the mothers in my playgroup, LeAndra asks me in an email to do cupcakes for her daughter, Luna who was turning one year old. I am ecstatic - my first order! And it's perfect because it's someone I know and with whom I have shared personal mommy experiences.

This cupcake had to be perfect! It would set the tone for the rest of my cupcakes. It was a test of my design and organizational skills. I had one week to do three dozen cupcakes - to test cupcake and frosting recipes, produce all the components, design the decoration, and put it all together. Could I do it? I had to do it!

Every night, after Laura was down at 7pm, I tied back my hair, put on my chef jacket, rolled up my sleeves, and went to work. The good and the bad thing was that LeAndra gave me a couple requirements: lemon or vanilla cake and frosting and decoration has to have moon and stars - "Luna" is moon in Spanish.

After three different cupcake recipes and three different frosting recipes and after Alec and I tasting all of them in different combinations, we finally settled on the right pair. I found a recipe online for lemon cupcakes, except I substituted all-purpose flour for cake flour, which gave the cupcake a softer texture. For the frosting, I made up my own vanilla frosting, the whole milk I infused with some Tahitian vanilla bean, which my father and mother in law gave me when they vacationed in Tahiti, resulting in vanilla bean frosting. All those little specks of vanilla bean made the frosting look authentically vanilla and classy.

The design took a couple days. I tried to mimic a picture I found on the internet - cupcake decorated with a puffy cloud of frosting. I was able to make the cloud, but it was more frosting than was needed for the amount of cupcake. With absolute disappointment in myself, I presented the cupcake prototype to Alec. I think his comment was "I like it!" But I wasn't convinced. Two days left and I was not satisfied with the current product. I went to bed dejected.

That night I dreamt of a design. I woke up the next morning, scrounging for Alec's colored pencils, scribbled out a few designs. I totally ditched the previous design and went with a Tina original design. My problem was that I was trying to copy someone else's design and it just wasn't working.

That day, I broke out the sugar sparkles and the rolled fondant. Within a couple hours, I had another prototype. This one I was happy with - the colors had good contrast, it was cheerful, it was girly, and the "Luna" moon stood out. It was something I was proud of.