One Fish, Two Fish Cupcakes

A few weeks ago, I created these adorable One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish themed cupcakes for Bekki's baby shower.  Seems like just yesterday that I was making Bekki & Matt's wedding cake!  Guests enjoyed chocolate or vanilla cupcakes, both topped with vanilla buttercream.  And how cute are the paper toppers! Check out my Cupcake Topper Tutorial to learn how to make your own.

I'm also happy to announce that Bekki & Matt welcomed their daughter Mia into the world, just last week!  Congratulations!!!

Monkey Baby Shower Cake

My friend Amy's sister is having a baby in April, and I was delighted to be able to make her baby shower cake!  The design was based off of the invitation that Amy created for the shower - how cute are those monkeys??  Both tiers were chocolate - top tier was filled with cappuccino cream, and the bottom tier was filled with vanilla buttercream and fresh strawberries.

Congratulations, Sandy and Brian!  The happiest wishes for the new bundle of joy that will soon enter your lives.

Bouchon Bakery's Better Nutters

I've been on a bit of a cookbook-buying kick lately (thank you, Amazon Prime, I don't know what I'd do without you!!).

My friend Laura had a baking day a few weeks ago, and the week prior, we poured over a few different books over lunch when we were trying to painstakingly narrow down the large list of things we wanted to make.  The stack of books included the Bouchon Bakery cookbook, which Laura had recently purchased.  And, with a quick look through the book, it went on my short list of books to buy.  The book itself impressive - it's huge! - and is filled with gorgeous photographs and personal stories from the authors.

The cover of the book features "Better Nutters" - peanut butter oatmeal cookies filled with peanut butter buttercream - and I've been dying to make them.  And this weekend, I finally had the opportunity.  The dough is a bit of a pain to work with - it gets very sticky, very quickly when rolling it out - and it requires refrigeration prior to rolling out AND freezing prior to baking.  Finicky, yes.  But, the extra effort was well worth it, and all of the steps can be spread out over days to make things a bit easier.  I weighed all of my ingredients (just do your best for the non-whole number gram amounts).

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Branching Out - Sourdough

And now for something a little bit different...some lovely homemade sourdough loaves!  A month or so ago, on a snowy, frigid day, I decided to bake a loaf of bread - a crusty country loaf, from the Flour cookbook (the Flour cookbook is fabulous - I've made probably about a dozen or so things from it, and everything has come out really, really well).  A conversation about said loaf of bread with my husband turned into how it might just be really fun to make a weekly gourmet grilled cheese - he'd pick the fillings, and I'd select and bake the bread.  We had our first grilled cheese on homemade bread the very next day.

I sent my friend Sasha a few pictures of my country bread loaves - he's a really amazing bread baker - and he said: "welcome to the obsession!".  And obsession it has become!  The idea of turning a few simple ingredients - water, flour, salt, and yeast - into beautiful loaves of bread is completely fascinating and magical to me.  The once a week loaf has turned into several loaves a week, of different varieties.  Over the past few weeks, I've made several challahs, chocolate babkas, brioche, country loaves, multigrain loaves, and several sourdoughs.  And while the commercially yeasted loaves are wonderful and delicious, baking sourdough has become a new love of mine.  It's certainly an investment (not really money wise, more time, effort, and the willingness to learn) and the learning curve can be a bit steep - you must care for your precious sourdough starter(s), the process of mixing, fermenting, proofing, baking can take quite a bit of time (sometimes, in a measure of days), and there are many things that can make your bread turn out not so great.  But, the rewards can be really, really great!

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Nicole's Baby Shower

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of creating this adorable baby animal cake for Nicole's baby shower.  Nicole and Jon have a baby girl due to arrive in April -  seems like just yesterday that I was making their wedding cake!

The top tier was chocolate, bottom tier was white velvet, and both tiers were filled with vanilla buttercream.  My husband helped out with quite a bit of the fondant work - I feel very lucky to have such a detail oriented, artistic guy, who actually enjoys making cakes!

Congratulations, Nicole and Jon!  The happiest wishes for the new bundle of joy that will soon enter your lives.