My sister is getting married in October and her husband to be loves my irish creme cake, but we were going to do cupcakes for him....can I use my same recipe I use for the cake? It is a doctored cake mix recipe.....and what about frosting? It is just a basic creme cheese with pecans that I use on the cake. What would I do for a wedding, especially so I can swirl it on or something to make it a little fancier? It will be outside too, but shouldn't be too warm, and I figure I could just have someone bring the cupcakes out as close to ceremony time as possible, do you think that would be okay?? Sorry for all the questions and thanks for any help!!

Many recipes convert easily to cupcakes - but honestly the best way to find out is just make it and see what happens! I do have at least one white cake recipe that does NOT convert - they don't rise and also they are so moist they just peel out of the wrappers. So do check it out! Cupcakes in my oven cook anywhere from 17min to 27min, just watch them the first time to see how long they take.

As for the icing, if you are worried about spoilage or melting, I recommend you try the cream cheese icing at earlenes.com - she has a shelf-stable recipe that is quite popular. The benefit of using Earlene's recipe of course, is that you can actually set up the CCs on display .

Swirling the icing on with a 1M tip isn't terribly hard (and I'm telling you this as a complete piping novice - I can barely pipe ANYTHING!), just practice a few times and you will get the hang of it; or else you could also try to make them fancier by icing them and then covering them with fondant. I just read a great thread about "fondant on cupcakes" that links out to some simple instructions about how to do it. http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-643899-.html. If you decide to try that, you CAN refrigerate them (if you choose a refrigerated cc icing instead), just don't seal them up tight or the trapped moisture will ruin your fondant decorations. Personally I don't have good luck refrigerating straight MMF (meaning marshmallows+water only) but Michele Foster's fondant recipe, or else commercial fondant like Satin Ice, refrigerates just fine.

If you don't want to do any fondant at all (even little flowers or something as in one of those links)...you could swirl on the icing with a 1M tip and sprinkle on some cake sparkles for a little more bling. Since it's an October wedding you could color the icing and make them look like fall flowers. Here's a cute buttercream sunflower on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/87832879@N00/2651087982/ - it doesn't have instructions but it looks pretty simple to do with a 1M tip and a candy melt or pastille in the center!