Cupcakes!

How many did you say?

725.

Seems crazy and it was a bit, but an opportunity to see what we could do.

A woman I met at a bible study heard me say I had a baking business. 

She happened to be the woman in charge of the PTA  at Lusaka International Community School, where James teaches.

They were having a 20th birthday party for the school, and wanted to give each child a cupcake. 

Could I do it, did I want the job? 

No I couldn't on my own but yes I wanted the job. 

AND I had my amazing girls. 

We figured out how many batches we needed to do per day over the next 2 weeks. 

6 batches a day for 5 days. 

Then 3 days of making 8 batches of icing. 

Sarah was awesome. She pretty much made all 725 cupcakes herself. We froze them in ziploc bags and placed them in the deep freezer. There was literally no more room to put anything in there when we were finished. 

After a few days of mixing, the Kitchen Aid just stopped working.

Sarah and I both figured... of course. So I ran to the store to buy a hand mixer (against the advice of my friend Karla..just don't do it, they are cheap and will break). I forgot how small and weak

 those things are. 

We arranged for the electrician to come by the next day and I even told him if he could get it fixed that same day I would give him a whole cake! (I was that desperate).

An hour before he came I tried to use it again and it worked!

I was so thankful. It went out again the next week while I was making the icing and decided it was time to use my nshima spoon. If it can stir the thick lumps of nshima surely it can be used for icing. 

Sarah with her 6 bowls lined up

Since I never make nshima myself, I finally found a good use for my spoon. 

I put the batches of icing in ziploc bags to store which ended up being great since I just cut the edge off the bag and squeezed it directly into the piping bag. 

Armed with our 2 piping bags Emma and I set to work on icing all the cupcakes. 

We took them out of the freezer and iced them frozen. 

Notice the bandanas and head scarf. Nothing worse than eating a cupcake and finding hair.

17 boxes in all. After about 6 hours, with a few breaks in between we were finished. My hands hurt from squeezing the bag but we were finished. 

 I was a bit nervous for how the delivery would go. I fit the boxes in the car and drove slowly and Emma came with me to deliver. Every bump we hit, Emma said, "Mom...the cupcakes."

They all were delivered safely and I will say it was actually very cool to see the whole school walking around with our cupcakes!