Transportation Tips for Mini Cupcakes

Yes, yes I know that that we've all moved on from the cupcake craze by now, and it's eye-gougingly tedious to encounter a blog post dealing with something so specific and so domestic when you are looking for insight, inspiration, drama or even just a few yuks, but here it is anyway: a very small piece of information, useful to only a few...

So I've been baking and decorating cupcakes lately - they're cute, portion-controlled, nobody gives a shit if you use a mix, and they're fairly inexpensive to churn out by the dozen for school bake sales, birthdays, work stuff, whatever.

Plus, somehow (much to my mortification) I've found myself the owner of a stacking cupcake caddy complete with carrying handle and reversible interior trays, which lets me transport three-dozen conventional-sized cupcakes. Maybe I'm just weirdly self-conscious, but I find it horribly embarassing to sashay into the school gym with this Tupperware monstrosity, looking every inch the soccer mom - I would seriously rather schlep around a ferret on a leash while wearing a 2-piece bathing suit.  But ferrets are not known for their skill or capacity in handling baked goods, so I swallow my wannabe hipster pride and just try to muster a little swagger whenever I'm on bake sale duty.

At Christmas I decided that mini cupcakes are far cuter than the full-sized ones and everyone can buy/eat more. But the cupcake carrier functioned more like a bouncy castle than a safe haven for the little guys and I ended up buying half of my contribution back at the high school concert because they were smooshed (om nom nom - oh well!)

Man, this is a lot of lead-up for a single tip with very limited relevance, so here it is, my very domestic tip for the cupcake-bakers out there:

The safest and easiest way to store and transport mini cupcakes is in styrofoam egg cartons.  Yep! Three dozen mini cupcakes (shown below) arrived safely at my workplace yesterday after being carried on the bus along with my laptop, my lunch and all my other daily necessaires. All of them survived the trip in perfect condition and were fairly easy to remove without smearing the icing.

Mini cupcakes safe and sound

And that is my tip! Thank you for bearing with me; I promise not to let this happen too often - I've got my reputation to think of.  I mean, next thing you know I could be offering up stain-removal or toilet cleaning advice.