Every year for his entire lifetime, I have made Bishop Danger Remis’ birthday cupcakes. Being Teno’s best friend, he has a free pass for the weirdest and wildest little kid birthday cakes until they are too old for birthday parties. Last year his theme was municipal vehicles, for which I made piles of candy garbage topped with garbage trucks, frosting Chicago flags with candy rats and cookie dirt cakes topped with dump trucks.

This year when his mom told me the theme was RV Campers it took me all of five seconds to plan the cupcakes. Smores, Vegan Cowboy Coffee (cookies and cream cakes with espresso buttercream) and the most popular flavor of the day, Tropical Punch Kool-Aid.

Armed with candy rocks, mini beer can toppers and picnic plaid cupcake liners from Bake It Pretty, I modified Billy’s Vanilla Vanilla recipe to produce 15 bright-red, extremely fruity cupcakes.

The beauty of this recipe? You can throw in any kind of Kool-Aid you like and make something new. I topped mine with a vanilla buttercream, dyed green, and piped on top with my grass tip. Oh, and I made some RV Camper toppers which you can download here:

Airstream & RV Camper

To make the cupcakes you’ll need:

• 1 3/4 cups cake flour, not self-rising
• 1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 1 small pouch of Kool-Aid
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Then you:

1. Preheat oven to 325°. Line cupcake pans with paper liners; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine flours, sugar, baking powder, Kool-Aid and salt; mix on low speed until combined. Add butter, mixing until just coated with flour.
2. 2. In a large glass measuring cup, whisk together eggs, milk, and vanilla. With mixer on medium speed, add wet ingredients in 3 parts, scraping down sides of bowl before each addition; beat until ingredients are incorporated but do not overbeat.
3. Divide batter evenly among liners, filling about two-thirds full.
4. Bake, rotating pan halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 17 to 20 minutes.
5. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

And now, for a little song from Bishop’s daddy:

As you may or may not know, I am psyched to be on the judging panel for this year’s Threadcakes competition! If you’ve been eating fondand under a rock somewhere I’ll fill you in – it’s a cake decorating contest that melds the creative, crowd-sourced designs of Threadless t-shirts with the uber popular art of cake decorating.

If you’re in the Chicago area you can watch Threadless’ Charlie Festa and I yap it up about the competition on WTTW Chicago Tonight this Wednesday, July 21st sometime between 7 & 9pm. If you’re not in Chicago, no worries – I’ll post the clip right here the very next day.

NEWSFLASH: Chicago Tonight appearance pushed to next week due to Blago trial coverage. I’ll let you know the new date & time asap!

Speaking of the next day, Threadless is dropping four of the coolest designs yet on July 22nd and I was proud to model a few of them. It’s top secret awesomeness so I can’t tell you anything else about it – except that one of you will win ALL FOUR designs. And, since it’s kind of a big deal, I’ve decided to give everyone multiple ways to enter.

You’ll receive one entry for doing each of the following:

1. visit Threadcakes and tell me your favorite submission for the 2010 competition so far
2. visit Threadless and tell me which design you’d like to see turned into a cake
3. become a Facebook fan of Threadcakes
4. become a Facebook fan of Threadless
5. become a Facebook fan of Bake and Destroy
6. follow Threadcakes on Twitter
7. follow Threadless on Twitter
8. follow Bake and Destroy on Twitter

So that’s eight chances to win four completely awesome shirts from Threadless. You can enter as many or as few of these ways as you like – just please consolidate them all into one comment on this post. For example, my entry would look like this:

1. Zombie at Tiffany’s
2. It’s Always Midnight Somewhere
3. done
4. done
5. done
6. done
7. done
8. done

See? Eight ways to win. Just for you. Because we here at Bake and Destroy, Threadless and Threadcakes like you. We really do. I’m picking a winner on Friday, July 23 so get to it!

Thanks for playing everyone, I just notified the winner!

When Stefanie of Red Velvet Stefanie sent me her French toast cupcake mix Teno could not wait to make it. Every day he harassed me to make them – but the mix makes 24 and I’m pretty sure we never need two dozen cupcakes in our house. We compromised when I remembered a recipe I used to make when I was a kid – cake mix cookies.

Now, if you’re using store-bought cake mix you can take that recipe and tweak it to your heart’s content. German chocolate was always my favorite, but I’ve had success with banana cake mix, coconut and walnuts and lots of other combinations.

Since this is a gourmet cake mix, made with actual flour and sugar instead of whatever the balls cake mix is made of, we tweaked my family’s favorite recipe a bit.

We used:

• French toast cake mix
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup butter, melted and cooled
• 1 cup quick oats
• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup milk

Basically, you mix everything together and bake it for about 12 minutes. Not too tough, but Teno and I made a video to show you how. After you watch, keep reading to find out how you can bake along with Stefanie when she competes on Food Network’s Cupcake Wars July 27th.

That was a family production, by the way. Tony was our camera man. And yes, Teno says bad words and I’m trying to make him stop so just don’t encourage him please.

So – ready to bake along with Stefanie? Awesome, because she’s going to send one of you her Cupcake Wars Surprise Pack! The pack includes mixes for the four recipes Stef used in competition – did she take home the $10,000? You’ll have to tune in to find out! Leave me a comment about the first thing you ever baked all by yourself and I’ll choose one random winner to bake along with Stef with their very own Cupcake Wars Pack. (I’ll pick a winner one week from today. Open to US addresses only, please!)

Thanks everyone! Congrats to our winner Samantha!

Depending on your powers of observation, you may or may not have noticed a little TLC Cake Crew badge on my blog recently. See? There it is.

Most of the time I steer clear of these online cake blog cliques A) Because I’m already in a food gang, and it’s called BrutalSnack, and B) They’re usually an elaborate ploy by some conglomerate to post advertising on my webpage thereby tapping into my “alternative” readership. While I’m sure TLC is thrilled to finally have an audience that listens to grindcore and watches Married With Children re-runs, I was actually very impressed with their “you don’t have to write about the Little Chocolatiers” policy – and especially with the group they put together. (Hello, Cakespy and Bake It Pretty?) Plus, they do awesome stuff like send me a Flip Cam and challenge me to make a summertime treat on camera!

So for this particular challenge, I took one of my most popular cupcakes – the Vegan Elvis Comeback Special – and turned it into a tall, frosty milkshake. My fellow Cake Crew bloggers and I are all making videos in hopes that they’ll be posted on TLC.com and chosen the winner by a team of judges who will award one of us with a 15 minute phone conversation with Buddy Valastro – yeah, the Cake Boss. I hope you realize the level of awesome that a phone call between Buddy and myself would be. I worked in an Italian bakery for years – I can yell about zabaione with the best of them! Judges are looking for creativity, appearance and online feedback – so please leave me all your feedback, comments, criticisms, and jokes about my Elvis-meets-the Honky Tonk Man-impression because it all helps my chances!

Bake and Destroy: Cake Shake, Rattle & Roll from Natalie Slater on Vimeo.

Because the ice cream requires several hours from start to finish, I made mine one day ahead.

For the dairy-free peanut butter ice cream you’ll need:

• 2 cups coconut (or any other non-dairy) milk
• 3/4 cup natural peanut butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (or DIY it with this recipe)
• 1 Tbs pure vanilla extract

Then you:

Stir the milk, peanut butter and sugar together over medium heat in a medium-sized sauce pan. Everything should melt together as you stir – bring it to a boil and stir briskly to make sure all the sugar melts. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Refrigerate for 2 hours, or until chilled. Follow the directions on your ice cream maker to freeze. I use the KitchenAid ice cream maker attachment so it takes about 20 minutes to churn. Stick that in the freezer to firm up.

For the cupcakes you’ll need:

• 1 mashed ripe banana
• 1 & 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup canola or vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup non-dairy milk
• 1 & 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1/4 cup finely chopped dark chocolate or vegan chocolate chips, chopped

Then you:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line your pan with paper liners. (You don’t have to make cupcakes – you can also bake this batter in an 8″ square pan or 9″ round.)
Smash the banana with a fork – it just needs to be smooshed, but it doesn’t have to be liquid.
Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and sugar into a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the oil, milk, vanilla, almond and mashed banana. Stir or fold the wet ingredients into the dry, but don’t over mix or you’ll get tough cupcakes. Small lumps are fine. Finally, add the chocolate, folding gently. (You could also leave the chocolate out of the cake and add it to the shake at the end.)
Fill liners 2/3 full. Bake 20-22 minutes or until the tops spring back when lightly touched. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

Finally you:

Throw one cupcake in the blender along with 2-3 scoops of ice cream and a splash of non-dairy milk. I went with coconut throughout because it adds a nice sweet flavor. I topped mine with Soyatoo Vegan Whipped Cream, although Melisser tells me that the mix is better because you can add sugar to taste. Topped with a cherry and poured into my Cake Boss pint glass this was a dessert fit for The King.

Thank you, thank you very much.

I don’t normally do posts like this, but I had such an inspiring and amazing week end I kind of have to. Plus, my friends at TLC Cake Crew just shipped me a brand-new Flip so I’m working on a video blog this week end – which means no new recipes until next week. (Trust me, it will be worth it. I have found new levels of gluttony and plan on invading your personal space with them.)

If you remember last week’s post, you’ll know that Tony, Teno and I spent the week end in Madison, WI so I could sit on the judging panel for the Baking Magic for Kids Bake Off benefitting Capital Candlelighters. I was pretty excited to meet my fellow judge and Cupcake Wars alumn Stefanie Gaxiola, the firecracker behind Red Velvet Stefanie.

First of all, it was my first trip to Madison and to my Madison readers I have to say I loved it. I have rural fear, so I was thankful that it had all the comforts of the city with just enough charm to remind me that I was no longer in Chicago. (Seriously, once I’m out of city limits I start to feel like some Texas Chainsaw Massacre shit is about to go down.) We partied at Ella’s Deli not once but twice, shopped around Pop Deluxe and squealed with delight as we actually got a seat at Ian’s Pizza (nearly impossible to do at their Chicago location.) After breakfast at Marigold Kitchen on Sunday morning we headed on over to Verona Hometown days.

I spotted Stefanie from a mile away – a blonde, tanned ray of sunshine among us doughy Midwesterners. We didn’t waste any time getting down to business – tasting about 20 pies and 5 or so cakes and gossiping about our experiences on Cupcake Wars. After we voted we took our seats on the Capital Candlelighters float and took a tour of Verona in their annual parade. I was so impressed with Stefanie not only because her red velvet cheesecake is a best-seller on The Cheesecake Factory’s menu, but also because her cake mix business is booming right now and she seems to have everything in place for world domination. Obviously meeting Stef and eating pie made for a pretty awesome Sunday, but I was truly touched getting to know the people behind Baking Magic for Kids and CapCan.

We raised $420 at Arluck Time!

Sadly, I think most of us have been affected by cancer in one way or another. I lost my friend Mat just over six months ago – many people I spoke with had lost children or nearly lost children. I honestly couldn’t wait to get back to Teno – even if he was acting like a total turd I just wanted to hug him and thank my lucky stars that the worst he’s ever had it was food poisoning from ancient soy milk. Hearing their stories, and then finding out that the economy has made it really tough for them to help families in need this year absolutely broke my heart. I can’t imagine what it would be like if Teno was sick and I couldn’t afford the food for his tube feeding. And I can’t imagine how hard it must be for CapCan to turn families away due to a lack of funding.

Something I’ve found so inspiring and awesome about the baking community is people’s willingness to give of themselves to help others. I’ve been involved in a handful of charity bake sale and it’s just flooring to see not only how many people will turn up with some kind of homemade awesomeness in tow, but also how generous shoppers are when they know their money is going to a good cause. Handing over a wad of cash to Grind for Life at Mat’s memorial was the best feeling on Earth.

So anyway, I wanted to let you in on this week end because it reminded me that there is so much that we as bakers can do besides feed people. The next time your friend’s band is playing, have them ask the venue if you can set up a bake sale table to benefit your local women’s shelter, theater group, or gay and lesbian teen alliance – whatever you’re passionate about. Having a garage sale? Add a cupcake table and a sign stating where the money from the bake sale is going. People will donate, and your cupcakes might entice them to come check out your vintage Wacky Packages collection while they’re at it. And shoot, Chicago – if you’re working on a bake sale make sure to call me!

If you’d like to get started, but aren’t sure who to benefit, these are a few great causes I believe in:

• Grind for Life – providing assistance with families suffering from the effects of cancer
• Capital Candlelighters – supporting families of children with cancer in the Madison area
• Built on Respect – fighting cultural genocide, ageism and discrimination while raising social and political awareness
• Women for Women – providing financial aid, job training, rights awareness and leadership education to female survivors or war, civil strife and other conflicts world-wide
• Imerman Angels – just found out about this one through work – they were in need of reusable bags to use to distribute lemon candies to people receiving chemotherapy, apparently they help to cover up the bad taste the treatment leaves in people’s mouths. This org pairs cancer survivors with cancer patients for 1-on-1 support.
• Girls Rock! Chicago – rock n’ roll camp for girls 8-16. Teaching a love of music and building confidence in young women when they need it most.

That might seem random, but those are all organizations that have touched me personally for one reason or another. Do you have a great non-profit to share? Do it! That’s what comments are for! And remember – use your cookies for good, and save your cupcakes for evil.

Do you love cake, but hate cancer? Are you looking for something fun to do this week end? Are you conveniently located near the middle of this fine country of ours?Well then come on out to Hometown Days in Verona, WI and join me for Baking Magic for Kids‘ Inaugural Pie and Cake Bake-off to benefit Capital Candlelighters! Sunday, June 13th – 10-11:30 Judging to take place at Firemans Park in Verona. Click the Baking Magic link for all the details.

Judges include:

• Diana Henry from Channel 27
• Susan Siman from Channel 3
• Stefanie Gaxiola of Red Velvet Stefanie
• Michael Pruett from Johnny Delmonicos
• Casey Fitzrandolph – US Olympic Speedskater
• and me!

Gift baskets for the winners will include great products from my 9-5, Reuseit.com! I hope to see a lot of you there, I’ll be the one with the SPF 50 and tattoos on her neck.

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Expensive, cute and impractical. Just like a good pair of shoes.

One of the cooler things I get to do as Community Manager at Reuseit.com, besides troll around Facebook for a living, is test new products for our site. We try everything out ourselves before we add it, and because I write a lot of the product copy it’s important that I completely understand how things work before I try and sell it to you.

Sometimes it’s brutal – like lugging four glass water bottles home on the El, attempting to use them all in one week end and then finding the unique features of each to write about. Sometimes it’s fucking amazing like discovering a product called Soap Nuts and entertaining my co-workers by reading the FAQ aloud. “Q: My nuts are sticky, what’s up? A: Some people think the sticky nuts clean better because they are pre-releasing their saponin.” You can’t make this stuff up, people.

So when our product selection team, aka my boss, decided we needed to carry muffin cups – or as we like to call them, reusable muffin cup cupcake paper replacements – you-know-who got the assignment. And I was none too happy. See, I already know the problems with silicone cupcake cups – I raided the Wilton tent sale a few years ago and bought every version they made.

First of all, they are never the same size as your cupcake pans at home, which throws off not only your recipes, but also your baking time. Speaking of which, cake bakes way faster in silicone than in metal. I learned that one the hard way. Say you manage to successfully make 12 evenly-cooked cupcakes – how the eff do you eat them? Unless you pop them out before frosting, which defeats the purpose of a cupcake “paper”, you end up destroying your cupcake trying to wrestle it out of the silicone cup. Of course you could eat your cupcake with a fork, but then you’d be a complete freak.

OK, so you manage to bake them and eat them – now you’ve got to chase everyone around and collect their dirty silicone cupcake cup so you can take it home and wash it. Wow, first I get to bake for you and now I get to scrub 12 tiny, scallopy, wiggly cups? Where do I sign up? But I digress… I am a loyal employee and I promised an honest review. So here goes.

I tested four different silicone cupcake cups: Casabella Standard Muffin Cups, Wilton Silly- Feet Silicone Baking Cups, Fred & Friends Teacup Cakes Cupcake Mold and Silicups Regency Silicone Baking Cups. Of course they were all different sizes and they each had their own set of instructions so I had to find some happy mediums. I prepped them all with a bit of canola oil and made a batch of lemon buttermilk cupcakes. I pre-heated the oven to 350 degrees and laid the oiled-up cups out on a baking sheet. My review of each is as follows:

Have fun washing these!

Casabella Standard Muffin Cups

Looks: Of all the brightly-colored cups, I liked these colors the best. Not pastel, not primary. Just bright, happy colors.

Size: Relatively close to a standard cupcake. They also come in large and mini sizes.

Price: $8.99 for six

Pros: 2.5″ like a normal cupcake, nice colors, cupcakes popped out very easily after cooled, can also be used to store frozen batter for nearly-instant cupcakes at any time

Cons: Cakes that normally take 20-25 minutes to bake were done in 15 minutes. Fine if you know about that ahead of time, bummer if you don’t.

Overall: Not bad, I was surprised at how many pros I ended up finding for a product I thought I hated.

Wilton Silly- Feet Silicone Baking Cups

We’re not actually considering these, but I recently received them as a gift so I thought I’d see how they compared.

Looks: Wilton’s classic primary colors. Not my favorite, but the feet are actually a nice touch. They elevate your cupcakes on a display table and enable you to quickly turn cupcakes into funny characters.

You eat what's in his pants.

Size: 2.5″ like a normal cupcake

Price: Around $11 for four

Pros: The feet… that’s pretty much it.

Cons: Getting cupcakes out of these cups made me feel like a total pervert. Picture it – you’re pulling a cupcake’s pants down. Weird.

Overall: I’m glad these were a gift, because Teno gets a kick out of them and I’ll have fun with them at Halloween, but I wouldn’t have spent $11 on them.

Fred & Friends Teacup Cakes Cupcake Mold

Despite my feelings for silicone cupcake cups, I almost bought these because they’re so cute. Imagine my delight when instead, I got them for free and was asked to test them for work.

Looks: Better in pictures. In person, these cups look pretty cheap-o and the plastic saucer is even cheaper.

Size: Bigger than a standard cupcake, which led to some baking issues.

Price: $17.90 for four

Pros: They look like flipping tea cups.

Cons: These were the flimsiest of all the molds I tried out, so filling them was tricky because they didn’t want to stay open. Plus, they’re deeper than a standard cup, so they took more batter than the others and took longer to bake. In person they’re very plastic-y and starkly white. Not as adorable as I’d expected. And finally, nearly impossible to get the cupcake out. Fail.

Overall: I’m glad these were free. I definitely would be missing my $18 right about now.

Cake: it's in there.

Silicups Regency Silicone Baking Cups

Looks: Like a cupcake paper, only clear and silicone. I noticed that the edges weren’t even – not sure if this was intentional or a defect.

Size: Seemed a bit smaller than 2.5″

Price: $12.99 for six

Pros: My cakes baked very nicely in these, and though they were easy to pop out compared to the Fred & Friends cups, the cake didn’t pull away from the cup like it did with the Casabella cups.

Cons: Pretty plain compared to the colorful papers I usually use, and the uneven edges bothered me.

Overall: I’d reach for these when baking a marble or rainbow-colored cupcake because rarely is the cake the star of the show. The clear silicone kind of turns the cupcake on its head and forces you to look at the cake more than the frosting. Not bad overall.

Conclusion

I still don’t particularly care for silicone cupcake molds. Or cups. Or pans. Or whatever you want to call them. They’re wiggly and misshapen and hard to clean. I know they cut back on disposable cupcake papers, but I feel like it’s worth the waste for the cuteness, reliability and convenience. I’ve sacrificed dryer sheets, paper towels and bottled water for the environment so give me a flipping break. Plus, I wrote a whole guide about greening your kitchen so I think I’ve offset my carbon footprint. I’m sure we’ll pick them up for the store anyway, so my recommendation would be Casabella or Regency.

The Giveaway

Have you been wanting to try silicone bakeware? Already a convert? Have you tried it, hated it, and now you want me to send you some so you can spitefully throw it in the garbage? Now’s your chance! Leave me a comment about your silicone pan experience or lack thereof and I’ll send one of you two Casabella Silicone Muffin Pans – a standard and a large. I’ll choose a winner 6/10 – good luck!

The giveaway is closed – congrats, Nancy!

Hail & kill & eat

Riding through the blackberries of endless time
The flaky crust rises with the horizon like Nordens on fire
Still peace breathes throughout the pan…
This pie will be the one…

Sugar sprinkles gleam upon these peaceful pies…
Far beyond the realms of fire and ice
The legion munches on…
Now ring the mighty dinner bell

Pie throughout the sky… set fire to the land
Pie throughout the sky… blackberry pie of Northern Darkness

Greetings brothers and sisters of metal. Are you ready for pie? Brace yourselves, then, for the Blackberry Pie of Northern Darkness.

For the crust you’ll need:

(adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours)

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp organic orange zest
• 2 1/2 sticks very cold, unsalted butter, but into tsp-sized cubes
• 1/3 cup very cold vegetable shortening, cut into 4 pieces about 1/2 cup ice water

Then you:

Place flour, sugar, salt and orange zest into a food processor and pulse to combine. Drop in butter and shortening and pulse just until they’re cut into the flour. You’re looking for a variation of butter chunks in the mixture – some will be small and others will be as large as peas. Gradually add about 6 Tbs of ice water while pulsing the machine on and off. Give it a few longer pulses to allow the water to mix into the flour. Check the mixture – if it’s too crumbly to stick together when you pinch it, add a little more water and do a little more pulsing. I needed between 8-10 Tbs water to achieve the correct consistency.

Divide the dough in half and roll into two balls. Heh. Flatten each one into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least one hour before rolling out.

The legion munches on...

After the dough has chilled, roll one disk out between two sheets of wax paper and place in your greased pie pan. I also add about 1/4 cup of crushed Cheerios or graham crackers to the bottom to soak up extra juice and prevent a soggy crust. Stick this back in the fridge for about 1/2 hour. While you wait you can get the filling ready.

For the filling:

• 4 cups fresh blackberries, washed and dried
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp organic lemon zest
• a squeeze of fresh lemon juice

Gently toss everything together in a big bowl – scoop into prepared pie pan. Retrieve the other dough disk from the bitter twilight of your refrigerator and roll it between two sheets of wax paper until it’s large enough to over the top of the pie. Crimp the edges to seal the blackberries’ cursed fate. You can use an egg wash and sugar to make the top golden brown and shiny. Shiny like my battle axe.

Bake in a 425 degree oven for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 375 and bake 20-25 minutes more. If the pie is browning too quickly, make a loose tent of foil over the top.

Ghost

Check it out, I’m starting to become a staple at Threadless. Between my lucrative t-shirt modeling career, their incessant need for vegan baked goods and my being one of the Threadcakes judges this year I’ve been at their office once a week every week for the past month. Sitting in the vintage airstream having meetings about cake videos and talking Adventure Time with the staff has been great – so great that I want to share a bit of the joy that comes with being friends with Threadless.

So I want to send one of you a Threadless shirt. Leave me a comment – I don’t even care what it says – and I will choose a random winner to pick out the shirt of his or her choice and I will send it to you. Threadless only ships to a handful of countries, but I will ship anywhere so enter away friends who live places I’ve never heard of!

Got bad luck? That’s OK – you can always buy your own Threadless shirt. I was just trying to be nice. I’m picking a winner on 5/30 so get to it.

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Congratulations to Dawn!

My beautiful sister

This past week end my mom and I set out to prove something to the world: baby showers do not have to suck. Now, my baby shower was attended by members of Sweet Cobra and one of my gifts was a breast pump wrapped in a Budweiser box,  but that’s not really the kind of gal my sister Nina is – and anyway, as much as I hate to admit it, baby showers should be less mosh parts and more cute.

But there’s cute-cute and then there’s lame-cute. We were determined to avoid the latter. We started with a general theme based on the way Nina is decorating the baby’s room – pink and brown and birds. I did a quick Etsy scan and found a shop called Paper & Pigtails that offered up adorable customizable, printable invites, thank you cards and other favors. A few email exchanges later and we had our stationery needs taken care of, along with cupcake decorations, favor details and custom-designed water bottle labels. Shop co-owner Kori was super accommodating to our requests and had designs in our hands within days. I credit custom-made invites and favors with at least 60% of why this shower was so successful. Stay tuned til the end of the post to find out how you can win customized printable invites and party circles for your party from Paper & Pigtails!

My mom obsessively hunted down pink and brown polka dot balloons, plates and napkins while I zeroed in on the snack situation. We had about 20 guests coming so we decided to make a few quiches and salads – and to ask my aunt Cindy to make her apple salad that I go gaga over at every family function. As far as cupcakes were concerned, my sister mentioned she’d been craving fruit through her whole pregnancy. So we put our heads together and decided on lime, strawberry lemonade and chocolate raspberry cupcakes. Our friend Tara carved a watermelon baby carriage and filled it with fruit – that kicked up the food table cute factor at least 20%. (Do you like all these percentages I’m pulling out of my ass? More to come.)

Macarons from Fritz Pastry

We decided Jordan almonds are the grossness, but wanted to send guests away with something little, cute and sweet. So my mom found these great little 2″ square favor boxes that would each perfectly house one macaron. The night before the shower I was building boxes, gently placing a macaron from Fritz Pastry inside and topping it with a party circle from Paper & Pigtails while my mom tied each one with brown and white baker’s twine from Bake It Pretty. (Also stay tuned to the end of the post for a great deal on cute stuff from Bake It Pretty!)

My mom worked on the party playlist (Foo Fighters, Green Day, No Doubt and other stuff she and my sister jam out to) and we scoured the Earth for non-lame shower games. Nina is a fan of the candy bar poopy diaper game so that was a must. If you’re unfamiliar, you get a variety of chocolate candy bars and melt one of each into a clean disposable diaper. Pass them around at the party and watch with delight as your guests sniff – and even taste- the “poop” to guess what candy bar it is. I swept the contest at my sister’s first shower by being the only fatso to identify a melted SKOR bar. After choosing a handful of other games we settled on bubble bars from Lush and SIGG water bottles as prizes. Every time a guest won a prize, my sister won a prize as well. (I gave her the matching thank you cards as one of the prizes, along with a book of stamps.)

Not a complete waste of time & plastic after all!

The planning part was relatively easy – so the day before the shower I went to my mom’s and got started on execution. There were buttercreams to make, cupcake toppers to assemble, water bottles to label – lots to do. I’m pretty anti-bottled water, but it’s tough to round up 20+ reusable bottles and glasses to serve your guests on a hot day. So I spent about 45 minutes pulling the labels off bottles, sticking our custom labels on and then tying each one with pink or brown ribbon. At one point my little brother watched what I was doing and gave me the “ooooooh kaaaaay” look only a little brother can give you when you’re doing something stupid. Truth be told, those water bottles were the talk of the party. People seriously thought those were so cool and they were so simple to do. Well, I should say they were one of the wow factors – the other two were the quiche and the lime cupcakes.

My Mom’s Perfect Quiche

• 1/2 cup shredded Swiss cheese
• 1/2 cup shredded gruyere cheese
• 2 tablespoons chopped green onions
• 1 (9-inch) unbaked pie crust
• 3 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 cup light cream
• 1/4 cup dijon mustard

Sprinkle cheese and green onions evenly on bottom of pie crust. Whisk together eggs, cream and mustard in small bowl. Pour evenly over cheese mixture. Bake at 375°F for 35 to 40 minutes or until knife inserted in filling comes out clean.

We did a few variations – one with spinach, a plain and one with bacon. And yes, you could make a crust but we made five of these things in about an hour and people raved about them so… why bother?

The lime cupcakes took me by surprise because I’ve never made them before and I really didn’t think it would be the flavor people went for of the three I made. But it was!

Craving cupcakes for my sissy

Lime Cupcakes

Preheat oven to 350 and line your pan with cupcake papers. Whisk both flours in medium bowl. Beat butter in large bowl until smooth. Add sugar; beat to blend. Beat in eggs 1 at a time, then next 3 ingredients (the batter will look curdled). Beat in flour mixture in 3 additions alternately with buttermilk in 2 additions. Spoon into pan. Bake 20-25 minutes or until tops spring back when touched lightly with finger. Cool in pan 10 minutes, remove from pan and cool completely. I topped mine with lime vanilla buttercream – which is just a simple vanilla buttercream with lime zest and fresh lime juice.

My sister loves the way cupcakes look when you “rim” them in colored sugar. So each cupcake got a roll through pink sanding sugar from Bake It Pretty.

My mom made a giant noodle salad and stuck it in the fridge to get delicious overnight and we ordered a spinach and garlic deep dish to celebrate an honest day’s work. I’m turning into a Golden Girl, so I was in bed by about 9:30pm and up again at 6am Sunday to get started on the real, actual fun stuff.

Lola & Lily check out our handywork

In the morning my dad blew up balloons – I should mention that he mowed the lawn for SEVEN HOURS on Saturday – and my mom and I cut lilacs and arranged them in mason jars for the tables. The yard came together pretty quickly – aside from the SEVEN HOURS my dad spent on the grass – we threw the table cloths on, strung two clothes lines, set up the chairs and rolled out the drink cart. My mom has been buying baby clothes since my sister announced the pregnancy, so we strung about 25 outfits from one line, including some hand-embroidered onesies she made and some hats she knitted. The bottom line was for the bibs. We put a few buckets on each table containing fabric paints, bibs and clothes pins. While Nina opened gifts we asked the guests to decorate a bib for Quinn.

About an hour before people were supposed to start showing up we threw the quiches together and stuck them in the oven. My dad made sangria and my parents argued about whether or not they should have bought a beverage dispenser for the occasion. I personally think it would go perfectly with the chocolate fountain they bought for my wedding reception and the helium tank they now own, but what do I know?

Guests started rolling in and it’s all really a blur from that point forward. We made bibs, played games, ate a lot of food and did a lot of talking about lesbians as soon-to-be-married family friends Jen and Lauren were in attendance. Once I posted the pictures and started hearing from people “I’m stealing that idea” and “those water bottles are adorbs!” I realized how much impact those little details really had – so I’m glad my mom and I are both OCD enough to have cared about them.

How could I not?

And now, because you managed to survive an entire post about a baby shower and not kill yourself, I have a little something for you. Kori at Paper & Pigtails is offering a set of customizable printable invitations and matching printable circle designs (for cupcake toppers, gift tags, etc) to one of my readers! Expect to increase the fanciness of your party by at least 75% if you win. To enter, leave a comment with one piece of advice for soon-to-be-born Quinn. Instead of leaving it up to Random.org I’m going to pick my favorite comment as the winner so put some thought into it! I’ll choose a winner on 5/26.

If you must get your hands on some colorful sprinkles, baker’s twine, brown baking cups or any of the other sweet little baking details we used for the shower you can find them at Bake It Pretty. And between now and 5/25 you can take 20% off your order of $20 or more when you enter MAYDAY20 at check out.

Bye bye, baby!