Cupcake Wars

My daughter loves the Cupcake Wars show on the Food Network so when the time came to plan her 13th's birthday, she new exactly what theme her party was going to be: Cupcake Wars! She planned the party to be just like the real show, with teams competing against each other on the cupcake taste and presentation. Since the party was the same weekend as Mardi Grass, the teams had to create cupcakes for the Mardi Gras event that was going to take place the next day at our house(We celebrated a Brazilian Carnaval the day after her party). Each team received their own t-shirts and they made cupcakes pins to adorn them. They also received all the supplies they needed to make 24 cupcakes, like cake mix, sprinkles, cupcake liners, spatula, bowl and mixer to name a few.
I made tissue poms and used the fun printable from Bird's party to decorate the table.For the sweet table, we had marshmallow cupcakes, gum ball cupcakes, cinnamon kettle corn, cupcake cookies, brigadeiro(chocolate fudge), Girl Scout Thin mints cookies (my daughter's favorite) and chocolate cupcake pops. To display the sweets, I used baking trays and cooling racks from the dollar store. Before they hit the sweets, they had tacos and chips and dip. Girls were divided in 2 teams and each team received the supplies to bake, decorate and display 24 cupcakes. Both teams received the same supplies to make a Mardi Gras cupcake display. They also came up with their team name, Crazy Bananas(yellow team) and Green Ninjas(green team). They had 2 hours to complete the task. My younger daughter, son, husband and I were the judges. At the end, we tasted their cupcakes and watched their presentation. Crazy Bananas won for presentation and Green Ninjas for best cupcakes.
I was so pleased to see that the girls really had a lot of fun and they used team work to accomplish they task.
Party Favors:
Girls took home some cupcakes and goodies from the sweet table in a cute paper bag with a label that said: "Thanks for baking with me".
Styling, food and photography - Crissy's Crafts
Printables - Bird's Party
Mardi Grass cupcake toppers for the challenge from The TomKat Studio
Cupcake baking party printable:http://www.birdsparty.com/cupcake-baking-printables-party-supplies-partyware.html
http://crissyscrafts.blogspot.com/2012/02/cupcake-wars-party.html