YW:Stand Ye in Holy Places Cupcake Display

I was recently blessed with an opportunity to make a 180 cupcake display for our stake Young Women's recognition dinner. I'd never been able to play around with this many cupcakes before and boy was it fun! I was able to be a lot more creative with it as well! This year's youth theme is "Stand Ye in Holy Places." The first two things that popped into my mind were of course the temple and cute shoes. I searched the internet and Pinterest for any kinds of ideas. There wasn't really much when it came to cupcakes. But I did see these amazing cupcake high heels at Cupcakes Take the Cake!

I just found out today, that they used graham crackers to make the soles, that would have been so much easier than what I did! I used plain old chocolate...and broke four of them in the process of trying to replicate these amazing heels! I knew there was no way that I would be able to make so many of these cupcakes, so I decided to make only 8 of them. One heel for each Young Women value. 

So I had figured out what I was going to do for 8 out of the 180 cupcakes! I knew I had to get the temple in there some how so I started playing around with chocolate melts to make a topper for each cupcake. My first attempts at a chocolate temple and Angel Moroni topper were pretty sad.

Than I remembered that I could use icing to fill it and be more detailed, and that I could draw a template to trace instead of free handing it and voila 100 times better!

Make it a little smaller and add some color and we have our finished product! 

So now I knew I wanted to use these awesome toppers for the cupcakes...but still, now how would I display them? And where would adding high heel cupcakes make any sense? How about adding a few high heel toppers as well? That works, but making 172 chocolate toppers and 8 cupcake heels...that seemed like it would take forever! Making the toppers is a two part process. Step 1) trace template with chocolate. Step 2) after chocolate has set and hardened, trace with icing. I would want the toppers to be fresh so the earliest I was willing to make them were 2 days in advance. Time for more thinking. How about some sort of temple to display the cupcakes on? Here was my original thinking.

It seemed like a great idea, but only if I could execute the construction of the centerpiece, the Laie Hawaii temple. 

Laie, HI temple

How on earth would I build the temple? Wood and paint? Boxes? Poster boards on boxes? Foam? Foam and poster boards? I made a trip to Ben Franklin and prayed that something would help me figure this out. And then I see the foam poster boards and it all comes together in my head! Using an exacto knife, two foam poster boards, some very precise cutting, gluing, glitter, makers, and more glue I was able to create my best duplication of the center of the Laie temple. All of course while catching up with the latest episodes of the Voice. (How awesome are the dynamics with the new coaches!)

Side note, the pink cupcakes were strawberry cupcakes.

Add some boxes wrapped in white and we have the temple! 21 cupcakes could fit on the temple...now what to do about the rest of the cupcakes and the endless chocolate topper dilemma? Landscaping! I then knew how to display 76 of my 180 cupcakes. And that would also mean 69 less chocolate toppers to worry about. All that was left was to figure out how to display the other 104 cupcakes. I still really wanted to have those high heel cupcakes in the mix. What about a dozen cupcakes with frosting the color of each of the 8 Young Women Values? Pull out my calculator...(12 color coded cupcakes + 1 high heel cupcake) multiplied by 8 YW values = 176 cupcakes! What?! That's the exact number of cupcakes I have left to figure out how to display! It was just too perfect, and I could put 4 value displays on each side of the temple too! The free value prints from Make it Perfect were the perfect touch to finish pulling everything together.

 Yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting for faith.

 Chocolate cupcakes with blue colored flour frosting for divine nature.

 Red velvet of course for Individual worth.

 Chocolate and green flour frosting for knowledge.

 Orange cupcakes with orange flavored frosting for choice and accountability.

 Lemon cupcakes and frosting for good workds.

 Red velvet and purple colored flour frosting for integrity.

And chocolate cupcakes with flour frosting and a little bit of gold sprinkles for virtue!

The humidity of the day caused me to lose a few of my Angel Moroni toppers to melting and caused me to break 4 of my heel soles. We almost only had 4 cupcake heels, but somehow I was able to remake some soles and throw together the last 4 cupcake heels, you can probably tell which ones those are because they are not very neat. It was also pouring the whole day of the event and I worried about how Sione and I would be able to transport everything with all the rain. Prayers were answered when the rain stopped just in time for us to move everything into the car and from the car into the cultural hall.

I thought the girls would be shy about eating the heels but boy was I wrong. A few were disappointed that they didn't get a heel! And did I mention how many cupcakes were left by the end of the evening?

The Before:

The After:

I'm so happy with how it turned out! I especially love that everyone; the leaders, the girls, and the mothers loved it too. My heart smiled when I'd hear them wanting to take pictures by the display and of the cupcakes! The stake young women's president was even in tears when she saw it because she was so happy! It was definitely a labor of love and a blessing to share and improve my talents! My only regret...not making sure I'd have enough time to shower and fix my hair and put on some makeup before leaving the house (o;

Happy baking and creating!