Cupcake in the Oven
Monday, March 7, 2011 On Friday night we celebrated our friends Blaine and Margaret and their little baby girl on the way. Lindsay from Lindsay Letters made the darling invitations and menu cards, the Cooking Club hosted and cooked, and some dear friends let us use their beautiful home.
Blaine and Margaret are super-creative--he's a designer and she loves all things paper. We wanted a look that was clearly baby girl without being over the top, so we chose soft pink and charcoal gray. Margaret is a part of our Cooking Club, and is pretty much famous for her cupcakes--thus "a cupcake in the oven."
We asked Margaret what she wanted for a shower, and she said she really wanted Blaine to be a part of it, and that they didn't want to open presents in front of everyone. They wanted it to feel like a celebration, but not necessarily a traditional shower. We loved that idea, and decided to include tags in the invites that asked each guest to bring their gift ahead of time, unwrapped and labeled with the tag. We set out all the gifts before the party--there was a clothesline of vintage gray ribbon where we hung all the tiny darling outfits, and a bench for all the other gifts. It was a great way to let people ooh-and-ahh over the gifts throughout the evening, but didn't require two hours of sitting in a circle watching Margaret unwrap each one.
For dinner, it was Amanda's idea to do a Grown-up Make-Your-Own Grilled Cheese Bar. It was a rainy, wind-whipping, miserable night--the perfect night for some comfort food, and letting people make their own sandwiches gave a fun, interactive feeling to the night. We pre-made two kinds of grilled cheese, for people who just wanted to eat and didn't want to mess around making their own sandwiches, and then we set out two panini presses and all the fixings for every kind of grown up grilled cheese you can dream up.
The sandwiches we made ahead of time were salami, fontina, & black olive tapenade on sourdough, and roasted veggie & goat cheese on multigrain.
And then we had all kinds of ingredients available:
Fruits, veggies & herbs: sliced green apple, plum tomato, avocado, basil
Meats: ham, bacon, salami
Cheeses: cheddar, pepper jack, goat cheese
Breads: sourdough, multigrain, baguette
We decided that tomato bisque and caesar salad would be the perfect accompaniments, so Melody made a killer, really rich bisque, and Brannon made her version of a caesar--what makes it so particularly yummy is that it's just the perfect amount of spicy. Yum.
For dessert, of course, cupcakes. Brannon made chocolate cupcakes with salted caramel icing and french vanilla cupcakes with strawberry creme icing. What's especially cool about the strawberry icing is that it's perfectly pink without using food coloring--you know I don't bake much, but some of my friends who do bake don't like using red dye 40 in anything for their kids, so the strawberries are a great alternative. Brannon said that she used quite a bit more strawberries than they suggested, possibly twice as much. Also she used about 1/3 crisco, 2/3 butter. Both icings were really, really delicious. I may have taken to licking the icing off the tops of quite a few cupcakes toward the end of the night.
Instead of favors, we set out bakery boxes with the cupcake logo stickers, and we encouraged people to pack up a few sandwiches and cupcakes for home.
One of my shower rules is no games. Absolutely no games. But we did want there to be some point in the evening when we gathered everyone together to celebrate Blaine and Margaret and their little baby girl. After dinner we asked everyone to come to the living room, and we spent a few minutes praying for their family. Casey prayed for Margaret and Paul prayed for Blaine, and even when it was all over, people stayed for ages. No one wanted to go out in the rain, I think, so we nibbled a few more cupcakes and poured a little more wine. Lovely, lovely night.
Reader Comments (9)
Very special shower! Any time I read a post such as this I want to throw a party "just because"! :)