For this year’s Maryland Day, there will be enough cupcakes for every undergraduate student enrolled (that’s 25,000) to have one.
And then another.
On Hornbake Mall, Dining Services will unveil what it believes to be the world’s largest batch of cupcakes ever on Hornbake Mall, measuring a mammoth 60 feet long and 45 feet wide and consisting of 50,000 cupcakes.
The delicious spectacle, which will celebrate the 10th annual Maryland Day, has been in the works since May, Associate Director of Dining Services Joe Mullineaux said.
“We’re celebrating all of the achievements we’ve made in the last ten years and all the achievements we’ll have in the next ten years,” Mullineaux said.
Mullineaux said the cupcakes will form the university’s seal on a field of white with the state colors along the border.
The university has already contacted the Guinness Book of World Records, but is only in the first stage of the application for a world record, said Holly DeArmond, assistant director for university marketing and chair of the Maryland Day marketing committee. DeArmond said she searched for records of cupcake displays but did not find any. She expects to hear back in late November from Guinness on whether or not the university’s display can go for a record.
This year’s cupcake display is expected to dwarf 2006’s giant strawberry shortcake Dining Services assembled for the university’s 150th anniversary. While Mullineaux and food service manager and pastry chef Jeff Russo said the humongous cake was good practice, this year’s event is on a whole new scale.
“This is going to be a much bigger undertaking,” Russo said. “It’s going to take a lot more time and space.”
For starters, the cupcake display will be much larger than the cake, which was a mere 24 feet long and 16 feet wide and just under half of the cupcakes’ 12.3 million calories.
The cupcakes will also be significantly pricier, with an anticipated cost of $14,600, compared with the cake’s $9,000. Mullineaux said corporate sponsors are being sought to pay for the treats, and if not enough are found, the cost will come from the Maryland Day budget.
Dining Services will still be putting a tremendous amount of labor into the display. Russo said ground work preparation will begin next week, with cake batter testing and schematics for the location of the 180 tables he expects to use for the display.
The true test will be in preparing to lay the cupcakes out, Russo said. He plans to make a scale drawing of the university’s logo, which will be filled in with 12,000 of the cupcakes. Since the project is so large, attention to detail will be key in the drawing and the actual execution of the display.
“You can imagine going 60 feet with cupcakes,” Mullineaux said. “If your angle gets just a little bit off, it’s a mess,”
Mullineaux and Russo are planning on setup taking nearly 12 hours, two frozen tractor-trailer trucks and 40 volunteers when the actual day comes.
Dining Services will begin baking and freezing the cupcakes starting at the end of December. The cupcakes will be stored all over the campus, “everywhere we have space,” Russo said.
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