Cupcake Holder
One things that's important to understand is the difference between cupcake holders (also called cupcake liners or cupcake papers) and a wrapper (also called a sleeve). A liner is what you bake in. In my opinion, the holder doesn’t look all that attractive after it's been baked in. The moisture from the batter seeps through the paper and saturates it. The liner then loses it’s brightness and vibrancy. I recently baked about 50 cupcakes for a baby shower in pink paper cupcake liners. The recipe was chocolate banana. After baking, you couldn’t tell what color the liners where really, they were saturated with the oils from the batter. There is a company called CupcakeCreations, based in Sweden, that makes "grease proof" papers. They're made from natural raw materials with no chemicals or any other foreign substances added. Great right? If you're having a birthday party for a 5 year old, yes. Their color selection is minimal, and in vibrant patterned colors that don't jive with most weddings. So, I decided to run to my favorite local bake shop to snatch up some wrappers that were pink. They looked MUCH better! A sleeve or wrapper is what you wrap the outside of the liner with after it’s baked. What a difference they make! There are a wide variety of wrappers available. Some are die cut, and some are imprinted with beautiful designs. What looks really great is when you vary the colors of the wrappers if displaying on tiers or different display plates. You can color coordinate the frosting with the wrappers on alternating tiers of a stand, too. There are so many styles of wrappers available, the sky is the limit! Another type of commonly used cupcake holders are silicon cups. These are cool because they eliminate the need to buy paper liners, and you can set them right on a baking sheet (no need for a cupcake pan). They also maintain their vibrant colors after baking (batter does not seep through) and can be used over and over. The downfall is that they’re expensive, especially for a wedding as you’ll probably be needing lots and lots of them. Who really needs 100 cupcake liners after their wedding, right? Another downfall is with the silicon is that the cake sticks to it, a lot. I’ve watched guests at wedding try to eat cupcakes out of silicon holders and it’s not the prettiest sight, they just don’t peel back from the cupcake like paper liners do. One other negative is that they’re extremely hard to clean. They need to be soaked, then run through the dishwasher, then soaked and washed again.
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