Over the weekend I was lucky enough to be asked to make cupcakes for two baby showers. One was for a girl the other a boy; both were for first time mother's to be. Being a mom myself I feel comfortable when I say there is no other experience like becoming a mother for the first time. There is nothing that can prepare you for it, and no real words of advice that an experienced parent can offer. It's just one of those things you have to experience for yourself, each experience is different yet uniquely similar and fantastically beautiful.

Both showers were going with a chocolate brown and polka dot theme (blue for the boy and pink for the little girl) which I really enjoyed (the colors and the polka dots). The little girl to be will be named Savannah so I decided to try something new. I made mini "S" shaped sugar cookies and then coated them with chocolate. I first tried dipping them but they were to small and just became blobs of chocolate so I decided to paint the chocolate on. Then I added some pink sanding sugar for a little sparkle. They were pretty fragile and I broke quite a few in the process but I loved the end result (make sure icing is room temp before adding cookies to top). It was simple, and pretty and pink and chocolate and, etc. etc.

Look how much prettier it is in the natural light (I'm having an issue with one of my photo lights...)

For the little boys shower, the parents have not chosen a name yet so I choose to make some cupcake picks that simply said "It's a Boy". I had originally planned on doing blue and white icing and alternating them on the stand but was unhappy with the color icing I was getting so decided to go with all white and I'm glad I did. I think the blue AND white icing would have been to busy and all blue would have been just too blue. The white icing was perfect, I added a tiny bit of blue sugar but you couldn't really see it.

Again....here it is in the natural light

Cookies, Cookies and more Cookies

This past weekend I had my first paying baking job!! I was enlisted to make sugar cookies for a baby shower; 100 cookies to be placed in bags as favors and another 30 in the baby's name to be displayed on a tray. The shower was on Sunday, I started baking on Thursday morning and in true Nicole fashion there were some speed bumps along the way...

First Speed Bump: On Wednesday night I decided I would measure out my flour and other ingredients to save me a few steps in the morning. Upon pulling out my bucket of flour I came to the realization that I had been so excited about the fantastic sale on butter at Publix that I totally forgot to check how much flour I had (it was $2 per lb!!!) and from the looks of it I didn't think I'd have enough. This time I lucked out and had almost exactly the 18 cups I needed. Breathing a sigh of relief I headed to bed to get a good nights sleep since the next day was to be a busy baking day!

Second Speed Bump - So much for that good night's sleep. I woke up at 3 AM not because I was anxious to get started but because I had to puke! Great I'm thinking, now I have the flu and I'm supposed to make 12 dozen cookies AND hand decorate them. Thankfully I was only sick once, however, after that one time I lay in bed for the remainder of the night panicking about whether I would feel well enough in the morning to bake and worried about contaminating the cookies.

Third Speed Bump - Thursday morning comes quicker then I wanted. Tired and starving but to afraid to eat in case I really do have the flu I help my little one get ready for pre-school and get her dropped off. I race back home, sterilize my kitchen (in case of the flu) and get baking. I started by preparing the dough, rolling it and then placing it in the fridge to chill. At 11:45 I raced back to pick the little one up and then made a quick stop at Publix for more flour and sugar just in case I needed it ( I also got Sprite to help settle my tummy). As soon as I get home I start baking the cookies...it is at this point I realize I'm in for a really looooooong day. You see I only have 2 cookie pans and these are big cookies I'm making so I could only fit 8 on a pan. Do the math 12 dozen divided by 8 is 18...18 times 10 minutes of baking is 3 hours. Now three hours doesn't sound so bad except I had to wait for the pans to cool before I could place the next batch on them and then there was the cutting of the dough, re-rolling the scraps, re-chilling and cutting again, and again, and again. This combined with the constant interruptions from my 3 1/2 year old made for a very inefficient day. Thankfully my mom stopped by and offered to take the nugget home for the evening. At 10 pm I had all the cookies baked, cooled and put away for the night. I headed to bed and crashed as soon as I my head hit the pillow. Here are most of the cookies waiting to be put away (they're stacked so you can't see all 144)

Friday morning, I popped out of bed, headed straight for the coffee pot and got right down to making icing for the cookies. And here is the next dumb thing I did. I knew I was going to need several batches of icing and I also knew I was going to need 4 colors. Now, you'd think I'd just make a batch of each color...yeah, so not what I did. Instead, I made one batch, separated it into 4 bowls and then made my three colors (the 4th color was white). So once that was gone, I had to make another batch and then make the colors again. Well anyone, whose colored icing knows it's damned near impossible to match the colors (unless your super anal and count how much food coloring you use in each batch...which I don't do). So I caused myself some considerable delays by doing it this way. I did manage to get all of the cookies outlined and filled by the end of the day. So on Saturday I would just have the final decorating and bagging to do. (here's a pic of getting ready to outline)

Saturday morning I get up and again get right down to business. I get the cookies out of the fridge and discover I've made another error. I was up so late the night before icing the cookies, some didn't have enough time to dry completely and when I covered them, the foil stuck to the icing and ruined the lovely smooth finish you want in this sort of cookie. GREAT! It was only about 10 that needed to be fixed, so I simply smoothed the icing as best I could using my handy paintbrush ( a must have when doing decorated cookies of this nature) and then re-iced them to cover the flaws. Those few still didn't look as good as I would have liked but they were still nice enough to present and hey out of 12 dozen if only 10 got screwed up that's pretty good! I worked on the cookies until almost midnight; I had to get done by then so I could watch Sarah Palin on SNL!!

Sunday morning all I had left to do was bag them and put them in the basket for the party, which I was also attending. Me and the cookies were all ready to go by 12:30 leaving me just enough time to snap a few photos..

All in all this project was a success. I completed it on time, the customer was very happy with the finished product and I got paid!! There are of course things I would do differently (like perhaps trying to be a bit more organized) but there is always next time. And my hope is that the more I do this the less my nerves will get all twisted up. I felt such a huge weight lifted off me once I had finished; I put a lot of pressure on myself and worry constantly about whether what I do is good enough. I suppose this sort of pressure is good...it ensures that I always strive to do better than the last time.