Baby shower

I co-hosted a baby shower last weekend for one of my good friends here in town. The baby is actually due in January, but because of vacation and travel schedules, holding it last weekend made the most sense. The baby is known to be a boy, and the room will be decorated with an owl theme.

Here's the mother-to-be. Have you ever seen a more lovely pregnant woman?Natalie helped me clean and decorate the house.Here are some more decoration shots:We also had flowers and, obviously, balloons.And there was food.And cake.I made the cake. I really wanted to make a shaped owl cake, but I didn't want to use fondant. So that was sort of hard. I'm going to try and note what I did here, just in case I ever want to do a project like this again. So, I baked the cake (the "chocolate is better than ?" cake, ironically) on Thursday, lining the pan with parchment so I'd be sure it came out in one piece. I let it cool completely on a rack, brushed it with vanilla water to keep it moist and then turned it back into the pan and wrapped that tightly with several layers of saran-wrap. I overnighted it in the microwave.

Friday night, after Natalie had gone to bed and I'd decorated the house, I turned to decorating the cake. I put it right on the serving board, and edged that with wax paper. I brushed it again with vanilla water. I'd deliberated long and hard about frosting, assembly timing, etc. - even going so far as to consult some more serious and skillful bakers than I (however, just like in writing a book, all errors and omissions are mine, and mine alone). I was torn between a caramel-ish buttercream, and quick-set true cooked caramel frosting. I went for the quick-set because I knew the color would be a rich, lovely brown and because with the pouring and quick-set-ness, I wouldn't have to worry about chocolate crumbs getting in my frosting. True 'dat. Alas, the rather unsurprising part about quick-set frosting is that it, uh, sets quick. And I'm a pokey decorator. So this was not the best combo. I had to enlist Mike to help me apply the slivered almond feathers before the frosting set. Once I figured out, though, that I could stick the almonds in at an angle, rather than just rest them on top, things got a little better.

So, I used slivered almonds for the feathers, coconut for the bust, a snickerdoodle, half an oreo, and a chocolate chip for the eyes. The "nest" was made from pretzel sticks. In retrospect, I could have made the nest look a little neater by using some peanut butter or making a little more frosting from scratch. But it was midnight, and I was tired, so I just sort of jammed the pretzel sticks in willy-nilly. I had also reserved cake triangles to be proper ears, but I totally forgot about them until the frosting was much too hard. So the owl got a strange pretzel / almond ear. Oh well.

Next time, I might think about using a buttercream frosting, although I dislike crumbs in the frosting (I have heard about freezing the cakes or doing a crumb coat to prevent this, but I've never tried either of these strategies).

The cake overnighted again in the microwave, uncovered this time. And at the party, everyone commented how moist it was, which was a big relief since I had been pretty worried about it drying out. And the decorations weren't soggy, either.

We also had presents.And guests and games.What's a party without favors?And, yes, there was knitting.