Zac and I decided that we would say 'Happy 4th of July' through cupcakes! Seriously, who doesn't like cupcakes?! We certainly do and we thought for sure that our neighbors would enjoy a sweet treat on a hot summer day. Our plan was to bake a bunch of cupcakes, package them, and then deliver them from door to door.
Not knowing what the neighbors' tastes would be regarding cake we decided to make a few different flavors. We settled on vanilla (you can't go wrong with a classic) and red velvet (one of our favorites). Not only were both flavors delicious but together the red and white cakes were perfect for celebrating the 4th of July.
We opted to make mini cupcakes instead of full size ones. I usually make mini cupcakes for parties and game nights and they always seem to be a big hit. Making smaller cupcakes instead of the larger ones allowed us to get more cupcakes from our cake mixes which meant that we could make more packages, go to more houses, and have enough cupcakes left over to take some to Zac's work as well as Scott and Amy's house that evening for the holiday celebration.
The yummy red velvet cupcakes were topped with cream cheese frosting....
....and the vanilla cupcakes were topped with a traditional vanilla frosting.
Zac pulled out the pastry bag and frosted all of the cupcakes. In the end they all looked as cute as this little one.
It was a little intimidating to look at our counter and see all of these beautiful cupcakes. With about a hundred cupcakes covering our kitchen countertop, it seemed as if we had our work cut out for us.
I gathered up all of our supplies that we needed to put together our cupcake treats and Zac and I started assembling our packages.
Here's what we used:
- Three sheets of patterned scrapbook paper
- Four packages of Wilton brand treat boxes
- One roll of red gift wrap curling ribbon
- Scissors
- Tape
- Pen
Since we were baking mini cupcakes and not the average size cupcakes we chose to use treat boxes instead of cupcake boxes. These Wilton boxes (measuring 1.5 X 4.5 X 4.5) perfectly accomodated 4 mini cupcakes.
After opening the treat boxes we taped each of the inside flaps to make sure that the treat boxes maintained their shape and didn't collapse in on themselves.
Next we cut the scrapbook paper into 4" squares and used the pieces to line the inside of each box. We thought the blue was a nice touch to add to the red and white cupcakes we were putting inside the boxes.
Zac and I realized that delivering our treats on 4th of July might be risky since some of our neighbors might have already left their homes to start their summer celebration. In case we rang doorbells and weren't greeted by anyone on the other side we figured that we should leave notes on our cupcake boxes so that the neighbors knew they were safe to consume. Since we hadn't yet been introduced to some of our neighbors we also thought that the note would probably be a nice touch to add onto the treat boxes even if the recipient was home to accept. In addition to holiday well wishes, Zac and I wrote our names and address on the note so that our neighbors would know who we are.
(No I didn't mess up and scribble all over our notes for our neighbors. As much as I love sharing with everyone, our address is one thing that gets to be a secret.)
After prepping the treat boxes and writing our notes, we started loading up our cupcakes and putting together our packages.
In the end, these are what each of the boxes looked like:
Zac and I were very happy with the final product. We loaded up all of the boxes onto a large tray, dressed Jim in a cute outfit and set out to deliver our treats to our unsuspecting neighbors.
We delivered one box of cupcakes to twelve different houses on our block. As we had anticipated, many of the houses were empty or at least the people inside weren't answering their doors. For these houses, we left our box of cupcakes on the doorstep and went on our way to the next house on our list. We did have success with four houses in which our neighbors answered their doors and listened to us explain to them who we were and accepted our small gift. At two of these houses the person who answered the door looked at us crazy/suspicious as I'm sure they expected us to be salespeople or something of that nature, there to disrupt their day. At both of these homes once they realized why we were there, their state of confusion turned to happy faces and big smiles.
Zac and I had a lot of fun going from house and house and really enjoyed meeting the few neighbors that we were able to speak with. Over the last few days we have been pleasantly surprised to recieve three thank you notes from our neighbors, two of which were not home when we delivered our treats. One of the neighbors who answered the door on the 4th of July hand delivered a thank you note the next day. It was great hearing that our neighbors loved their sweet treats and even more wonderful knowing that we've made some connections with the people in our neighborhood.
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