Baby Shower for Becs

'Girl' Cupcakes

The cupcakes were the Lemon cupcakes with a Lemon Buttercream Icing

'Boy' Cupcakes

Uncooked Turkish Pide bead dough

Cooked

and sliced.....

Eclairs (or profriteroles) with whipped Chocolate Ganache icing and with Custard Cream filling

They don't look glamorous because I ran out of time but they tasted AMAZING!

Ginger and Coconut Crunch....Donna Hay

Annabel Langbein's Chunky Guacamole

Mini sausages wrapped in streaky bacon with Rosemary, Honey and Wholegrain Mustard glaze

Annabel Langbein's Samosas using Spring Roll pastry and deep fried rather than baked. They aren't in the traditional triangle shape because I bought the wrong wrappers (they were too small)

That's Becs....the pregnant one!

Harry with cousins Hollie and Mini

Last weekend we hosted a baby shower for my sister in law Becs who is due with our new nephew (they don't know what they are having but I just KNOW it's a boy and my ring test confirmed it), in just a month's time. It was a weekend of cooking but at least I didn't have to worry about the games etc as these were assigned to the lovely Tori who did a fantastic job of them. 

I made the girl/boy cupcakes which were the lemon cupcakes you can find a few posts ago with a lemon buttercream icing. I bought chocolate molds from my favourite cake decorating supply shop www.kiwicakes.co.nz and while I had intended to use gumpaste to make them, I changed my mind and did white chocolate ones instead with a bit of gold and silver lustre dust and edible glitter to zhoosh them up. I have to say I thought they turned out pretty well.

Having received Annabel Langbein's new cookbook 'Simple Pleasures' from Dons the other week, I was pretty keen to try some recipes from it. All worked out very very well. From it I whipped up the Turkish Pide Bread (really easy and very yummy...the girls asked where I had bought the bread from), Dukkah (easy and yummy with a good EVOO and the bread I made), Chunky Guacamole (fabulous slightly different way to make this old classic and one which I will default to from now on), Samosas (I'm sure my Indian friends at work would be impressed with the flavour of this filling...it was complex and well balanced) and Speedy Peanut Sauce (speedy like it says and tastes way more complex than it is). I also made Ginger and Coconut Slice from Donna Hays new magazine which was delicious. I am very fussy about GC and this one did not disappoint. The sausages were from a magazine called Good Food Australia and will be redone again and agin when there is a gathering. 

So all in all it was a pretty successful day. Thanks to the others for bringing more food on the day....we did not go hungry at all! Finally get Annabel's book...you will NOT regret it!!!