Baby Shower for Miss Monica

"Sprinkles" Baby Shower

Way back in August, I had the honor of co-hosting a baby shower for my close friend, Monica. She and her husband are expecting their first child in about two weeks and I am so thrilled for her little family.

For the shower, we kept the theme pretty simple with just lots of pink and some accents of brown to match the nursery colors that Monica had decorated with. We held the shower on a Sunday afternoon and Monica's Aunt, another one of the hostesses, had the great idea of having a dessert buffet instead of just a large cake. We ended up with two long tables crammed with desserts!

I made some chocolate covered strawberries that had a drizzle of pink tinted white chocolate on top.

Can't have a party without my favorite, cupcakes! I decorated with pink sprinkles to pay tribute to the guest of honor, little Sprinkles.

We held the baby shower over Rodeo weekend, which is our largest community event out here in Phillipsburg. We proudly host Kansas' Biggest Rodeo and knew we'd have a lot of people in town already so it would be a great time to get everyone together for the baby shower. Samantha, another close friend and co-host, found this Rodeo Princess sign - it was just perfect for the event and this special little girl!

Here's a picture of the expectant Mommy, Monica, with myself and Samantha.

Monica - Hopefully these next couple of days will go by smoothly and quickly for you. You, and your family, are in my thoughts and prayers. I can't wait to hear the news of the little girl making her appearance into the world!

Coconut Cupcakes - Barefoot Bloggers

I recently joined a group of bloggers that challenge each other to cook two new dishes each month. The recipes are all selected from Ina Garten - aka- The Barefoot Contessa. I thought that joining the group would help to push me out of my comfort zone in the kitchen and the incentive to try new dishes that I normally wouldn't pick myself.

I'm a big fan of the Food Network and one of my favorite shows on the channel is The Barefoot Contessa. Her Chicken Piccata is heaven on a plate. She lives in the Hamptons and her cooking style reflects her location. I so want to join her and Jeffery for a breakfast brunch on the beach.

So, back to the Barefoot Bloggers challenge. The first recipe chosen for February was Coconut Cupcakes. I'm not a big fan of coconut but I haven't given it an honest try in my adult years so I was looking forward to trying it again with an open mind.

The recipe for the cupcakes can be found here on the Food Network's website. The recipe has a five star rating, so I had high hopes for these cupcakes. However, seeing that the recipe calls for six sticks of butter made me a little disgusted at that thought of so much butter in just one batch of cupcakes. After all, this wasn't a Paula Deen recipe.

I ended up cutting the recipe in half and had enough batter to easily fill 16 cupcakes and way too much frosting.

I had a great helper in the kitchen that was using his toy mixer while I made the cupcake batter in my stand mixer. The recipe was easy to make and made less mess than the water that was spilled everywhere by the other cook in the kitchen.

The cupcakes themselves came out really well. They were springing, moist and light with a golden butter taste. I'm still not a big fan of coconut but it was a nice compliment to the cupcakes. I made half of the batch without the coconut and they came out just fine as well.

I wasn't a fan of the frosting. It was just much too sweet for my personal taste. My husband, however, was eating the leftover frosting by the spoonfuls.