Baby Shower Brunch

My sister and mother recently threw me a lovely brunch baby shower at my home. They kept the decorations pretty simple with pink and white accents and lots of pretty flowers.

My sister put together an oh so yummy brunch menu with something for both the meat eaters and vegetarians in the group. A special thanks to my designer extraordinaire friend Mary Campbell for helping me create these cute menu borders that we printed and set out in frames. Mary used a much cooler font, but I had to make some last minute changes, so I take full responsibility for the not-designer approved font!

How cute are the little yogurt parfait cups she created with pink ribbon bows? Guests could combine almonds, granola and berry compote for the perfect mix.

Another big hit was the candied bacon that my sister made. How can you go wrong with deliciously sweet and crispy bacon?



For dessert, they got a caramel cake from Southern Sweets. This cake is the business! I did overestimate my ability to eat the entire gargantuan piece I cut for myself, but the Mr. and I dispensed with the leftovers in short order. The cake topper from etsy made the cake extra adorable.



I'm not really a shower game kind of gal, so instead, for an activity, we set up a onesie-making station with iron-on decals and fabric pens. My friends made such adorable onesies that I just know Baby V will be one stylish little lady! Get your own decals here.



Thanks to all of my sweet friends for the generous gifts and great company, and thank you to my mother and sister for hosting such a wonderful party!

Sources:

Quiche - Whole Foods
Candied Bacon: My Bueno Cookbook
Caramel Cake - Southern Sweets
Onesies - Carter's from Diapers.com
Bud Vases and Frames - Ikea
Iron-On Decals - Julia Rothman Iron-Ons
Cake topper and Tassel Garland (not pictured)

Cake Topper: M Elizabeth Designs

A Mexican Themed Dinner Party

The Adventurous Tastes family birthday has come and past. I was over-ambitious this year, and decided that since our bday was on a weekend, we should have a dinner party. Sounded good in theory, but turns out my first large scale, multi-course dinner party was a lot to handle, and we spent most of our birthdays cleaning and cooking. Oh well, lesson learned, next time I'll let someone throw a dinner for me!

I was determined to cook something I was familiar with since I simply don't have the nerve to try something for the first time for a crowd. I had visions of a cozy Italian winter meal, with hearty fare and lots of great red wine. So I did a test run of baked ziti with spicy pork and sausage ragu. Sounds totally scrumptious, right?

Alas my test run was unimpressive. Not bad, but not blow your mind good either. At this point the big day was getting close, and I didn't have much time to work something new out. So I tried one more test run on a dish I'd pulled off successfully once before ages ago - Tacos de Carnitas. I have to admit that once again I wasn't blown away, but time was short, and I thought it was pretty good party fare, so I decided to go with it. A Mexican themed birthday dinner seemed like a reasonable stand in for my original Italian concept.

My birthday menu:
First course: Queso Fundido with chorizo, guacamole (thanks to little sis and her hubby for contributing!)
Main course: Pork carnitas
Side: Grilled corn salad with cotija,
Dessert: Spiced molten chocolate cakes - I added cinnamon and a pinch of chile pepper to make it more like Mexican chocolate.
Cocktails: Mr. AT whipped up some incredible margartias with fresh squeeze orange juice and what seemed like gallons of Patron and Grand Marnier.

Being the bschool dork that I am, I made a spreadsheet to keep my timing for the night straight. There were a lot of moving parts! Of course, next thing I knew, people were showing up, I still had no makeup on, and the food was definitely not done. Thanks a lot Excel!

Despite the fact that none of my dishes were knock your socks off good, except for maybe the fondue, it was all still pretty darn good, especially for a first major dinner party effort. Biggest failure of the night was oddly enough the dish I've made the most times, the molten cakes, which typically wow everyone. This was the first time I made them in my new oven though, so perhaps that's to blame for why they were not so molten despite cooking for the same amount of time as always. The cinnamon and chile gave the cakes a pleasant kick, but they were way too dense and dry. Blurg! I was pretty bummed by those, but fortunately after a couple margaritas, some great wine, and even port brought back from our honeymoon, I'm not sure anyone's taste buds were in top form by that point!

The remnants of of an enjoyable evening

So what did I get right? Keeping the drinks flowing is key - it makes everything taste better! And be thoughtful - I had a pregnant guest so we got blood orange Italian soda for her so she wouldn't feel left out while we guzzled margaritas, and my chocolate-hating guest got creme caramel ice cream for dessert.

What did I get wrong? The main thing was that next time I will definitely seek out some dishes that can be made in advance. I had wayyyyy too much to do at the last minute, and I'd prefer to be hanging with my guests rather than slaving in the kitchen. I'm looking forward to summer cook outs because I know we can make some damn fine burgers without hours of slaving, and the onus isn't all on me since Mr. AT is the resident grill master! And never again will I do so much work on my birthday!

That said, I had a great time, and hope my guests did too. In the end, dinner parties are mostly about a comfortable atmosphere and great conversation, and on that front, I think we did alright. Practice makes perfect, so even though I am somewhat daunted after this venture, I'll definitely have to try again soon if I have any hope of becoming the confident, glamorous hostess I long to be!

Baking for company: Cinnamon cupcakes with chile-chocolate buttercream

As I mentioned before, the boyfriend and I had dinner guests on Friday night. I'm still getting the hang of entertaining, so I wanted to make as much in advance as I could. So Thursday I set aside the afternoon to tackle this intriguing sounding cake recipe from Food and Wine (natch).

As per usual I couldn't find everything I needed at one grocery store. Why is that always the case? Whole Foods didn't have ancho chile pepper, and I couldn't bring myself to schlep to Kroger, so I did some research and decided that my valle de sol chile pepper could substitute for ancho. Once I got home I realized the recipe called for 5 whopping sticks of butter in the icing. Great googly moogly, that's a lot of butter! So instead I made a last minute switch to making cupcakes so I could get away with making half the icing. 

For some reason all of my baking makes an unholy mess, but this was my messiest experience yet. The recipe called for mixing the cake's dry ingredients in with the wet ones at medium speed. I learned the hard way that you should start much lower and work up to medium. Going directly to medium speed results in a mushroom cloud of flour which effectively covered parts of my kitchen that had nothing to do with the baking process. I had to wipe down my olive oil and balsamic bottles, my frying pans, you name it - anything in a 5 foot radius was covered in white powder. I even managed to track flour footprints onto our kitchen rug, which the boyfriend found hilarious and snapped a shot of. 

 It didn't occur to me until almost too late that cupcakes would take less baking time so I got the first batch of 16 out just in time at around 20 minutes. The second batch of just four cupcakes using the remaining batter were checked starting at 15 minutes. We had to dash out to dinner before finishing icing the last couple cupcakes so the icing went in the fridge. This icing gets really hard in the fridge, so you have to let the icing sit out for at least 15 minutes before you can spread it. Same goes for the refrigerated finished cupcakes. 

We've been letting them sit out for at least half an hour before being served, and they are much moister that way. The resulting cupcakes were pretty damn good. Cinnamon cake isn't as eyes-roll-to-the-back-of- my-head delicious as something more chocolaty would be, but it was a nice change and paired wonderfully with the spicy icing. I love Mexican spicy chocolate, which is what attracted me to this recipe, and this recipe definitely lives up to that standard. 

You could definitely add even more chili pepper/cayenne to kick this up even more. As it was, this was just mildly spicy adding a layer of flavor to an otherwise traditional buttercream. Delicious! Alas the mess was so egregious that the boyfriend has requested that I take a baking break for a bit, so my baking exploits will be on hold until I entertain again. Fortunately the cupcakes were a hit with the boyfriend's office-mates and my guests. My friend helped himself to 2.5 cupcakes, so I must have done something right!