Princess Cupcake Afternoon photo shoot

My local council (Hills) wanted to come and take some photos of my work for their upcoming 2011 calendar, and asked if I could arrange for a couple of extra kids to come for some action shots of me teaching cupcakes. So I decided on a princess theme and invited a couple of my 3-year-old's girly-girl friends over for an afternoon of princess cupcake decorating fun!

Inspired by the likes of Mrs A in the Cove, I've always wanted to do a party spread like this, so this was the perfect excuse.

The whole thing turned out a little bigger than Ben Hur and I lost many hours of sleep over it, but in the end I was really pleased with the result!

 the spread

Juice, macarons, cakepops, and marshmallows

What you see here are 2nd rate macarons...

After the first succesful few batches of macarons, I hit a macaron wall this week and all attempts flopped. Being a perfectionist, I just had to keep trying... but after 6 batches, even I had to say enough is enough.

Well, just ONE more :o) ... magic batch #7 turned out beautifully!

So the night before the photo shoot, I laid out the best of my batch #7 macarons to take some photos... and ended up smashing the whole box of them when I was packing up!!!!!

Lucky I had some list-B macarons waiting in the fridge for their moment of glory (the tops are a little browned)...

Cakepops - another thing I've been itching to try.

 Love heart cookiepops
Meringues courtesy of Woolworths

Party bags

The castle cake.

Princess cupcakes (cupcake is under the dress).

'Upside-down' cupcake inspired by Debbie Browne

I was really happy with how these turned out.

Snow White

Cinderella

Tiana

Belle

Sleeping Beauty

Outside for the photo shoot