Baby Shower

Framed shower invitation and onsies hanging out looking cute.

Happy March 1st! Spring is right around the corner and I couldn't be happier!

My sister, Rebecca, is expecting her first child in April. It's SO exciting. My little one is going to have a cousin!

Sunday my other sister Theresa, Mom, and I, threw her a family baby shower. I say "family" because in a few weeks Theresa and I are throwing another shower just for Rebecca's friends. Our families are VERY large on both Mom's and Dad's sides so it works out better to have one just for them and one just for  friends.

Childhood pictures of the mom and dad to be along with the ultrasound of the newbie. And how about that cute baby banner?! Theresa's pretty crafty.

Theresa ordered the cake from a fabulous shop here in town. It's simple but oh so pretty. I inspected it pretty well to see how it was made and sometime in the future I want to try a version of it. It has such a smooth, clean finish that the perfectionist in me dies for. And that's all buttercream, except for the monogram. 

And did I mention it was super tasty?

I made the cupcakes. They were white cake with my aunt Joanna's incredible buttercream frosting, topped off with a quartered strawberry. I will never use another buttercream recipe after making hers. It is fantastic. I will share it with you guys in the future.

I had a time with these puppies. I mentioned before that I was doing a trial run for an upcoming event. This was the event. The trial run went great! The actual run? Not so great. The first 50 I made fell for some reason that I have yet to figure out. We had unusually warm weather this weekend so I am guessing that was the issue? To top it off, the matte silver papers almost totally pulled away from the finished cakes just minutes out of the oven.

The recipe I used calls for sour cream and instant pudding and the results are a super moist cake. After reading on the internet that an especially moist cake can cause the papers to pull away, I ditched my recipe and went right to a boxed white cake mix. Since I only had enough silver papers to do half of the cakes, I bought Reynold foil papers for the rest.

The cakes came out great and didn't fall this time. I watched them for 3 hours to make sure the papers didn't pull away and sure enough, they stayed! I put them in the traveling containers since they were absolutely cooled, made my icing and packed it up as well for the trip to my hometown the next day. I planned on frosting them once I got there to make things easier on myself.

The next morning I started packing up the car. As I picked up the cupcake containers I noticed that the silver papers had pulled TOTALLY away from the cupcakes. It was as if someone had taken each one, pulled off the papers and sat the cakes back in them. The foil papers were still intact so at this point I knew that the silver papers were just no good. 

I was panicking. I have made cupcakes for years! Of all times for them to flop, this was the worst. After talking to my mom, we decided to just display the naked ones without papers instead of making a whole new batch. We improvised and hid them behind the foil dressed ones.

I was worried, but when one of my aunts saw them, she said she thought it had been done on purpose. My friend Amy declared it as genius. My aunt Joanna said they turned out beautiful. Way to stroke my ego, gals!

They actually look cute with no clothes on.

Here is a tip if you ever use fresh strawberries: Wait until the last possible second to embellish your cupcakes with them. Once they hit sugar, they automatically begin to macerate, which means they start to soften and release liquid. I waited until a half hour before the shower to top the cupcakes with the berries, but you can see in the above picture, the sugar in that icing got the juices running pretty quick.

Here are a few more goodies from the shower:

Fruit tray

Chicken Salad Croissants (My Mom's chicken salad is the best.)

Asparagus Roll Ups

 The Asparagus Roll Ups were a recipe from Theresa. They are divine!  Because Theresa mixed everything up and I mainly helped with assembly, I am not absolutely sure of the exact amounts of the ingredients. But after looking at other versions of the recipe online, this is pretty darn close:

Asparagus Roll Ups

12 slices of bread, crusts removed

24 asparagus spears with the tough ends cut off

8 oz. packaged cream cheese, softened

2 T. green onions, chopped

1 pkg bacon, cooked and crumbled

blue cheese

Parmesan cheese

3 T. melted butter

Roll the bread flat with a rolling pin.

Mix together the cream cheese and onions. Spread on the bread. Sprinkle on some of the crumbled bacon. (I am sure you could also mix the bacon in with the cream cheese and onion mixture to make things a bit easier.)

Lay 2 spears of the asparagus diagonal on the bread. Our spears were quite large so we only used 1  per roll up instead of 2. Also, because they were large we blanched them beforehand. 

Sprinkle over a good amount of Parmesan and a bit of Blue cheese. Fold the bread over the asparagus forming a triangle. Press around the tips of the bread together to seal them a bit.

Brush the top of eh bread with the melted butter and bake for 10-15 minutes at 425 degrees, or until the bread starts to brown.

I can't wait to make these myself. They were phenomenal!

All in all, the shower went off without a hitch. Rebecca got a lot of wonderful gifts. We got to see family, eat good food and I took lots of pictures with my new lens. (Yes, it arrived on Friday!)

The Friend shower is this month. I am making a special treat for it that I am very excited about! I don't want to ruin the surprise for my sister so I can't say what it is now. But no worries. I will have another full post on that shower as well!