Cupcake a Week: Cupcakes for a Cure, Part 1

The big weekend is here! The Cupcakes for a Cure tasting that I've been advertising on my blog sidebar is this Sunday! This event really has potential to be a huge success as we were featured in the newspaper this week...YEAH! Those are pictures of my cupcakes on the front page of the living section, how cool is that!

As you all know I love to bake & decorate cupcakes and I have been dreaming up a way to be able to do just that and raise money for a great cause all at the same time. Well this weekend it is going to happen! I have teamed up with three other ladies and together the 4 of us are going to hopefully raise a lot of money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I'm the "coach" and "baker" of our 4 person team. I coach for Team in Training and as a way to help out 3 of the participants who are currently training and fundraising for the Nike Women's Marathon in October I have offered to turn my kitchen into a cupcake bakery for a day and crank out 1000 cupcakes!

There has been a lot going on this week in preparation for the big event so instead of sharing with you a new recipe I'm going to give you a behind the scenes sneak peak at how the event is coming together.

This is the venue where the cupcake tasting will take place. One of the girls that is fundraising teaches at a catholic school in Mobile and had a connection to one of the buildings on the campus for us to use. How cute are those chairs...they remind me of a little cafe bistro.

This is the front of the room that we are going to use to set up our cupcake dessert table featuring 5 varieties. Featured flavors are: Vanilla with Vanilla Buttercream, Chocolate with Peanut Butter Frosting, Chocolate Chip, Jammin' Strawberry Cream & Chocolate and Lemon Blueberry.

There will be door prizes given away every 10 minutes of this 2 hour event...here are a few, a cupcake book and some baking mats for kids.

Lots of cupcake liners. We have chosen to bake minis for the tasting and each flavor will be baked in a specific color wrapper.

Here's only a glimpse of some of our cupcake ingredients. Thanks to a lot of the local grocery stores in Mobile we were able to get all of our ingredients donated, so that means all money raised at the door is 100% profit and goes directly to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society!

I've done the math and I figure I can fit 48 minis in my oven at a time. So to get 1000 mini cupcakes that means about 21 batches of baking and between 4-5 hours of oven time!

We are going to add some color to the cupcake display table using these cloth paisley print napkins. We plan to display the cupcakes on a variety of white and glass cake pedestals to create a shabby chic look for the day.

So tomorrow starts the big bake-a-thon and will definitely be a test of endurance in the kitchen! Luckily Katie, Wendy and Jennifer have volunteered to come over and help me out, so together the 4 of us should be able to conquer the cupcakes!

Be sure and check back next week when I post all the details and photos of the actual event!