So my sister is much younger than I am, and she is just starting out on this baby-journey.
A bunch of us threw a shower for her last night. I was in charge of two things:
centerpieces
(just one of eight that I threw together using vases and bowls we already had – going for the eclectic look)
and desserts:
(the dessert table – thanks to my cool friend who let me borrow the tied stands!)
(vanilla bean cupcake with cream cheese icing – I love me some cream cheese icing!)
(lemonade cupcakes with lemon glaze)
(triple chocolate cupcakes with dark chocolate ganache)
(sugar cookies – birds and flowers)
It was so much fun – all the baking and making . . . and truth be told my amazing-baker sister did help (yes, with her OWN shower!) The vanilla bean cake recipe was a new one for me, but it was wonderful – super moist and yummy! It was my first time using a real vanilla bean, and it was so fun . . . after I stopped being scared that I was going to do it wrong.
I got the lemonade cupcake recipe out of a Better Homes & Gardens Cupcake magazine that my mom bought before the shower; the glaze was simply juice from three organic lemons mixed with enough powdered sugar to make it thick but not so thick that I couldn’t spoon it over the cupcakes.
The triple chocolate cupcakes were a disaster! I made chocolate cake batter, added dark chocolate chips, then put them into special baking cups that don’t need a muffin pan. They were a little shorter, so the cakes turned out shorter. All went beautifully until I pulled them out of the oven and set them on the table to cool. There they pulled away from the edge of the cupcake papers and shriveled to these mini-puck-looking shapes. It was horrible! Eventually, we came up with the idea of pulling them out of their original cups, placing them into the white papers and using the ganache as planned. I think they turned out okay in the end, but I sure was sad about saying good-bye to my original vision!
While the taste of the lemonade cupcakes was my favorite flavor, the sugar cookies were my favorite thing to look at! I have been looking for a sturdy sugar cookie recipe for years and years; when I found this one, I also found an icing recipe that I like better than the typical royal icing! Talk about a score! This is the second time I’ve used these recipes, and I just love working with the dough and the icing. So. much. fun!
lovely!
but where, oh where is the picture of the cute pregnant lady?? I love cute pregnant women.