Construction Baby Shower

Earlier this month, we had a little baby shower.  NOT for me, 'cause we are most definitely done with all that.  But one of my close friends is expecting a baby boy, so several of us got together to throw her a shower.

Hostessing is not my forte, I do much better with "make yourself at home and help yourself to whatever you need".  So I stuck to offering up our new house as the location, baking cake and prettying up some chocolate and let the other ladies handle the details.

Mom requested a strawberry cake, which was an new challenge, so it took me three tries to get the flavor I was going for.  I ended up making a regular white cake from scratch, but adding in strawberry syrup.  This technique is from Cook's Illustrated.  For one recipe of cake, you cook about 2 cups of frozen strawberries until they get juicy.  After straining, you have about 3/4c of juice that you reduce down to 1/4c, and that is added to the cake batter.  This wasn't quite the strong strawberry flavor mom was wanting though, it was more mild.  So I added strawberry flavoring also, just by continually tasting to judge how much was needed.  At the end I went ahead and threw in some strawberry jello too because I still didn't have the strong strawberry flavor of the cake I was trying to imitate.  That was probably a mistake.  Jello changes the texture of the cake, I'll leave it out next time.

After the cake was baked, I mixed the leftover strawberry pulp in with buttercream frosting and put a thick layer of that between layers.  For the outside of the cake, I used regular buttercream because I couldn't get the right color on the strawberry buttercream.

I cut a ramp into the cake, covered it with crushed oreos (I only used the cookies, not the frosting) for "dirt", and piped "grass" around the edges with a 233 wilton tip*.  

Earlier in the week, I designed a wrapper sized to fit miniature candy bars.  I used double sided tape to cover chocolates with these wrappers

They went into plastic treat bags and I made a card stock topper to close them up.  This is one side, and the other side said, "Thank you for helping us celebrate!"

Then I sat back and let other people handle food and games because I would rather kick the corner of a dresser with my pinky toe at 2am than be the center of attention at a party.

*Affiliate link

Earlier this month, we had a little baby shower.  NOT for me, 'cause we are most definitely done with all that.  But one of my close friends is expecting a baby boy, so several of us got together to throw her a shower.

Hostessing is not my forte, I do much better with "make yourself at home and help yourself to whatever you need".  So I stuck to offering up our new house as the location, baking cake and prettying up some chocolate and let the other ladies handle the details.

Mom requested a strawberry cake, which was an new challenge, so it took me three tries to get the flavor I was going for.  I ended up making a regular white cake from scratch, but adding in strawberry syrup.  This technique is from Cook's Illustrated.  For one recipe of cake, you cook about 2 cups of frozen strawberries until they get juicy.  After straining, you have about 3/4c of juice that you reduce down to 1/4c, and that is added to the cake batter.  This wasn't quite the strong strawberry flavor mom was wanting though, it was more mild.  So I added strawberry flavoring also, just by continually tasting to judge how much was needed.  At the end I went ahead and threw in some strawberry jello too because I still didn't have the strong strawberry flavor of the cake I was trying to imitate.  That was probably a mistake.  Jello changes the texture of the cake, I'll leave it out next time.

After the cake was baked, I mixed the leftover strawberry pulp in with buttercream frosting and put a thick layer of that between layers.  For the outside of the cake, I used regular buttercream because I couldn't get the right color on the strawberry buttercream.

I cut a ramp into the cake, covered it with crushed oreos (I only used the cookies, not the frosting) for "dirt", and piped "grass" around the edges with a 233 wilton tip*.  

Earlier in the week, I designed a wrapper sized to fit miniature candy bars.  I used double sided tape to cover chocolates with these wrappers

They went into plastic treat bags and I made a card stock topper to close them up.  This is one side, and the other side said, "Thank you for helping us celebrate!"

Then I sat back and let other people handle food and games because I would rather kick the corner of a dresser with my pinky toe at 2am than be the center of attention at a party.

*Affiliate link