Monday, August 18, 2014

A pink & mint baby shower

Hi! 

This past Saturday was one of the most stressful days I've had in quite a while. I threw a baby shower for my sister and even though I had so much fun preparing for everything (I always think that the anticipation of something is even better than the moment itself), I didn't enjoy the day as much as I wanted to. There were a few setbacks, the first and the most troubling was that the baby shower was intended to be outdoors and an hour before the event, it started to rain. Not a little pretty rain. It poured. And the wind was blowing hard. So yeah, I was freaking out, we didn't know what to do, my boyfriend and I were like crazy trying to get everything out of the car without ruining the decorations. Half and hour before the baby shower started. Somehow we managed to pull everything out :) and the most important thing is that everyone  enjoyed the moment! 

I baked some sugar cookies with royal icing using the recipe from  Glory (Glorious treats), I used a color palette of pink and mint.  I  also made 50 vanilla cupcakes  with american buttercream frosting, also from Glory's,  I used my new cake pop pan to make some chocolate cake pops. The souvenirs from the shower were these cute little baby succulents made by a friend from school. All the decorations were made by me and Pinterest was basically my bible. (Decorations: paper garlands, pom poms, mason jars with flowers, a little car with mints and chocolates, little plastic cups with gummy bears and with chips, peanuts and some little "golos" with chile, etc.)

I'll leave you the Sugar Cookie Recipe from Glory Glorious Treats

Rolled Sugar Cookies
This recipe yields about 30, 2 1/2 inch cookies or 16, 3 1/2 inch cookies
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 teaspoon good quality vanilla extract ( I used Madagascar vanilla bean paste, you can get it at Michael's). 
Make sure to only put cookies of similar size on each bake sheet.  If you try to bake smaller cookies with larger ones the small ones will be over done before the large ones are baked.
Directions:
  1. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour and baking powder and set aside.
  2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  This should take about 3 minutes.
  3. Add the egg and vanilla and beat another minute or so.
  4. Add the flour mixture slowly.  (Be careful not to add too much at a time or you will have a snowstorm of flour.)
  5. Blend until all of the flour is incorporated and the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.
  6. Take the dough out of the bowl and place it on a piece of parchment paper.
  7. Using your hands, knead the dough a few times.
  8. Place the dough in a large plastic (ziplock type) bag and refrigerate for about 2 hours.  If you want to speed up the chilling process, place the bag of dough in the freezer for about 20-30 minutes. Just don’t forget it in the freezer, or it will become to firm to work with (and then you’ll have to wait for it to thaw).
  9. When it’s almost time to remove the dough from the refrigerator (or freezer), preheat oven to 350 degrees (F).
  10. When the dough has chilled and is firm, take out about half of the dough, leaving the rest in the refrigerator (until your ready to work with it)
  11. Place the dough on a lightly floured work surface.  You’ll notice the sticks I have on either side of the dough.  These are paint stir sticks (available for free from the paint department of any hardware store).  There is a product on the market called Perfection sticks, which are sticks that usually come in a set of a couple different thicknesses.  They are designed to help you roll out the dough in a nice even thickness.  Since I don’t own Perfection sticks, I just glued two paint stir sticks together, which makes about the perfect thickness for sugar cookies. (So you need 4 sticks total, since you need a double thick stick for each side of your dough.)  If I want the dough a bit thinner, I just roll out the dough to the thickness of the sticks, then remove the sticks and roll just a bit thinner.
  12. Place a piece of parchment paper on top of the dough.  This helps you roll out the dough without adding additional flour (adding too much flour can make the dough a bit tough, and can create little pockets of flour in the dough that cause bumps to form on your cookies during baking, making it more difficult to decorate later).
  13. Roll out the dough to about 1/3 of an inch thick.
  14. Cut the dough with your choice of cookie cutters.  Try to make the best use of the dough you’ve rolled out.  Every time you re-roll the dough you add a bit more flour, and can create the flour pockets I mentioned that can cause bumps to form in the cookies while baking.
  15. Place cookie shapes on a prepared baking sheet.  I bake my cookies on heavy weight metal baking sheetsDescription: http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=gloriou-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B0000VLH1U, topped with SilpatDescription: http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=gloriou-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B00008T960 brand silicone liners. SilpatDescription: http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=gloriou-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B00008T960 liners are a bit of an investment, since you’ll probably want to have two (I have four) but they are such a great quality product and last a lifetime.
  16. Place entire baking sheet (with cookies on it) in the freezer or refrigerator for about 3-5 minutes.  Chilling the cookies this way will help ensure they keep their shape while baking.
  17. Bake cookies for 8-10 minutes depending on the size of the cookie.  Bake until they are just barely beginning to take on a golden tone.  They will continue to bake as long as then are on the pan, so don’t let then get too brown.  Cool for just a minute or so on the pan, then carefully remove cookies from the baking sheet and place on a cooling rack.


Royal Icing Recipe
  • 4 Tablespoons Meringue Powder 
  • 4 cups (about 1 pound) powdered sugar
  • 6 Tablespoons warm water (to start, see additional notes below)



  1. Beat all ingredients until stiff peaks form.
  2. *Make sure all bowls and utensils are totally grease-free or your icing will never reach proper consistency.
  3. Spoon some of the thick white icing into individual bowls and add coloring.
  4. Add additional water, about 1 teaspoon at a time until you’ve reached the consistency you need.























The baby has no name - yet. So I encouraged people to write their favorite names on a chalkboard paper roll.





For the pom poms you can check out this  Pom Pom Tutorial it takes time & patience but the outcome is sooo worth it (unfortunately I didn't take close ups to the pom poms but you can see them in the picture with the succulents, [above the last one] ).
And for the paper garlands check out this easy tutorial :)



Sofie.

1 comment:

  1. So exciting! Sounds like you did a great job. Everything looks adorable!

    ReplyDelete