Baby Shower

A fantastic woman at work is having a baby soon. We have seen her through her whole pregnancy. To me, it's been wonderful to see this. She is truly happy, and thankful, and humble, and caring, and loving. She is going to make a great mother. You never really see someone so incredibly thankful that a baby chose them to be their mom, and this woman is. She is due very soon, and everyone at work is counting down the days until we see this beautiful baby (the father also works with us, so it is twice is exciting). So this Wednesday we are throwing her a work baby shower. Nothing too big, but big enough to show her that we are there for her and super excited for her. Since I love to bake, I wanted to do something really special for her.

Today I spent 8 hours baking 3 different cupcakes, 1 cake, 2 frostings, buttercream roses, a strawberry cream filling, and chocolate monograms.

First cupcake made was a red velvet with buttercream frosting. (I would have done cream cheese frosting, but I wanted to make the assembly line easier, so I stuck with buttercream.) I wanted to do chocolate monograms for these, but I didn't have much success with it. I'm too impatient and want things to be done right the first time. So, I didn't do what I had planned but I think they still turned out okay in the end.

After the Red Velvet, I made a white cake and a chocolate cake, made 12 cupcakes of each and used the rest of the batters to make a marble layer cake.  The vanilla cake was topped with vanilla buttercream and heart sprinkles.

The chocolate was filled with a strawberry cream filling made from a recipe on Wilton.com, and then topped with a chocolate ganache using white and dark chocolate swirled chips I got from work, that I have dubbed the Willy Wonka chocolate chips. For decoration, I made pink roses and put those on top.

I frosted the marble cake with buttercream using the fantastic spatulas my wonderful boyfriend gave me for christmas. It's not fantastic, but cupcakes are more my thing. And I'm not good at my letters yet.

So I spent 8 hours today setting off a baking bomb in my kitchen, and not only did it make me happy, I hope it make another special someone happy.

If only I could spend 8 hours every day baking, and make money, I would definitely have a happy life doing what I love. But for now, I do it as a hobby for other people to make their days a little better.