Wedding Desserts - Recipes

This was a bit of a working vacation for me - I was asked to make the desserts for the wedding. Amy didn't want a wedding cake, she just wanted a small variety of desserts, and choose cheesecake and cupcakes. I suggested adding cake pops to the mix, and she pretty much left the details up to me after that. Since the wedding was purple, I thought we'd go all out with PURPLE. Here are the recipes I used.

I made little flowers out of royale icing and brought them with me in my suitcase in a tupperware. They made the trip just fine! I used them to decorate everything, so whether cake ball or cupcake -they all got a little flower embellishment.

cake balls, all ready to go! They were actually really really pretty!

For the cake pops (balls), I made a purple cake (use purple dye instead of red, in red velvet), and then a cream cheese icing to mix them together, and then dipped in chocolate. They were delightful.

Red (Purple) Velvet Cake
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 Tablespoon cocoa
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups oil
1 cup buttermilk
1 Tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 oz. purple food coloring
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and flour two 8 inch cake pans.
Lightly stir eggs in a medium bowl with a wire whisk. Add remaining liquid ingredients and stir together with whisk until blended. Set aside.
Place all the dry ingredients in your mixing bowl and stir together really good with another wire whisk.
Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix on medium-high for about a minute or until completely combined.
Pour into cake pans and then drop the pans on the counter a few times to release any air bubbles.
Bake for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
After about ten minutes, remove from pans and cool completely on a wire rack. I also cover in plastic wrap while the cakes cool.


Cream Cheese Frosting (for cake balls)
8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
6 cups confectioners’ sugar

Beat cream cheese and butter on high until creamy. Add vanilla.
Then, add the sugar in batches. Scrape down the sides in between each addition.

For the cheesecakes, I used one of my mom's tried and true recipes, but instead of making an entire cheesecake as the recipe would suggest, I just spread the batter out over each cupcake sized one (after baked, I mixed up the sour cream topping and spooned some onto each one, and baked again, as recipe indicates). For the bases of these, we had two options. Half of them had a whole Nilla Wafer on the bottom as the crust, and then other half had an entire Oreo cookie on the bottom as the crust.

Cheese Cake

base: (*if making into small cheesecake, use a base as I did, note above)
2 cup graham cracker crumbs
3 tablespoon sugar
6 tablespoon margarine 
 filling:
3 pkg cream cheese (8oz.)
1 1/2 cup white sugar
4 eggs
1 pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla 
topping:
2 cup sour cream
4 tablespoon sugar
2 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
serve with:
1 can pie filling-cherry

Mix base ingredients and press into spring form pan. Chill. Set
oven at 350. Beat softened cream cheese with sugar and salt until
fluffy for about 10 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating 5
minutes after each. Add vanilla. Pour over crust and bake 50 minutes
at 350. Cool for about 15 minutes out of the oven. Mix topping.
Spread on cake. Bake at 450 for 10 minutes. Chill. When ready to
serve spread pie filling on top. (*adjust cooking time for smaller cupcake sized cheesecakes. Time will be likely around 17 minutes, watch closely until you know how long it takes in your oven)

For the wedding, I topped the cheesecakes with 3 things prior to serving - blueberry pie filling (purple!), whipped cream, and drizzled purple chocolate

For the cupcakes, they were Duncan Hines mixes, a chocolate fudge and a french vanilla. I filled each one - the vanilla ones with a blackberry jam and lemon juice mixture (small amount of lemon juice, helps to make it a little more easy to squeeze in there, and helps cut down on the sweetness a little), and the chocolate ones I filled with a marshmallow creme. I used my typical buttercream recipe, and dyed half of it purple.

Marshmallow Creme Filling
2 cups marshmallow fluff
½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
Pinch of salt
½ tsp. cream or milk

Mix on medium speed until well blended with a sticky fluffy consistency.

A pic of the cheesecakes topped whipped cream