The High Tea has been and gone, and while I’m also on a bit of a break from my cupcake business, I’m a bit stuck for things to do. So, I’ve decided to stage another dessert bar!

What is a dessert bar?

A dessert bar is an arrangement of desserts (and sometimes savouries) on a table in a creative way. It’s usually accompanied with a theme or colour scheme that is repeated throughout the bar, in the food, tableware and backdrop decorations. All the desserts are arranged so the bar is in symmetry, and usually has a central focal point like a cake on a stand, or a cupcake tower (or flowers).

I featured one of these masterpieces on a scale to feed 80+ people at the high tea (scroll down on the main page for the photos). I’d like to do one a bit smaller, and to take some more unique care in each dessert, with proper personalised labels and arrangements.

How can I be involved? I loved your High Tea work!

I’ll be doing a helpy-helper call out to people in Adelaide in mid-September for your help to set up and consume the dessert bar! I’m planning on doing this in early October to coincide with my mid semester holidays.

I am still looking for a theme, so this is where you come in, loyal readers! I have three boards below with some colour scheme and presentation ideas, and I’d love you to pick one. I’m going to start planning this on the 1st of September (this year is flying by!) so you have four days to vote for your favourite on the right hand side of the website in the poll box!

I can’t wait to see what you choose, thanks for voting

I’ve had a very busy few weeks on my hands! After the giant cupcake order, the following weekend I was appearing at a Ladies Night with a cupcake stall and also at the same time, 45 minutes away, had cupcakes featured at a wine group night.

After countless hours of reading and checking things I thought I was prepared so headed off… And forgot additional boxes to give to people to take a lot home! Oops. But I’ve learnt for next time.

I also learnt that I overbaked. I had half of my cupcakes left over, and I think that’s also at fault of me not bringing the take home boxes for people to take them home. I felt so bad about that I was such a ball of stress that week that I got a huge headache after the stall was over because I realised I didn’t eat for over a day – my fault, but it proves you have to remember to look after yourself!

So, to explain the stall, from left to right:

• Cake stand with Malteaser Cupcakes
• Sugar Cookies in various shapes
• A tray of Jelly Slice cupcakes
• A tray of packaged rum balls
• The four tiered acrylic stand with a giant cupcake on the top, and Vanilla cupcakes
• The mini cupcake stand with Oreo cupcakes

At the same time this was happening, across town I had Cherry Chocolate cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Ganache on display at the Dead Reds Wine Group. Cupcake Treats sponsored the event and donated 25 cupcakes, they were very popular!

I had a million questions about the giant cupcake and they were all the same – is it real? I’ll talk about this in another blog post, but it was – it’s a chocolate case with buttercream frosting. There’s a chocolate cake in there!

Anyway, I’d love to do this all again – it sounds like I might have an opportunity one day soon with a friend asking if I would be interested in doing one at her brothers school, so fingers crossed. I loved doing it and talking to everyone and it was great exposure for my business

Don’t forget, if you ever have any questions, please ask!

It all went so well! I spent most of Sunday smiling and running around like I was on fire but everything fell into place wonderfully. We raised over $1000 for Camp Quality by selling over 400 cupcakes! I baked over 60 myself and many others put in the hard work and brought loads as well.

Here’s some of mine, also with a secret surprise!

My delicious Jelly Slice Cupcakes, which were gone pretty quickly!

Award winning Oreo Cupcakes (on the bottom row of the stand, which I actually hired for the event)

An old classic favourite, Vanilla Butterfly Cupcakes. These are just wonderful.

Red Velvet! These also vanished pretty quickly too, and it was the first time I tried to make the cream cheese frosting for these and it just turned out lovely (thank goodness). I need to get some of the Wilton Red colouring paste for these to get that real red colour instead of a pink

And finally..

OHMYGOSH HAMBURGER CUPCAKES!

Essentially, to make hamburger cupcakes, bake 12 vanilla and six chocolate, cut all of them in half, make up or use some premade green, yellow and red icing and put it together. Oh, and the sesame seeds! They’ll stick on with some orange juice. Everyone thought they were adorable, and they were gone in less than a couple of minutes.

The winning cupcake of the day was the vanilla dairy free one – and the recipe for that is on this website! Congratulations Anne on winning that (they are really tasty).

Thanks to Taryn for taking all of these photos while I was setting up, you can see all of them at the Cupcake Camp Adelaide November 2009 Flickr Set.