Tomorrow, I’m helping out with a baby shower for one of my BFFs.  As I’m excited and in the party planning mode, I decided I’d compile a list of my favorite “tea sandwiches.” Although her shower is not a tea (she did co-host a lovely tea for my bridal shower), the shower has my mind running around mini foods. I hope you enjoy this list.

Apple-Swiss Turkey Sandwich - Spread honey mustard on a slice of cocktail multi-grain slice of bread. Layer turkey breast with thinly sliced apples, cucumbers (do not peel either) and Swiss cheese. Top with another slice of bread.

Brie-Cranberry Turkey Sandwich – Spread cranberry sauce on a slice of cocktail rye bread. Layer with turkey, spinach leaves and Brie cheese. Top with another slice of bread. *Keep away from soft and unpasteurized cheeses during a baby shower, the momma to be isn’t supposed to have them.

Curried Chicken Salad Pita – Mix together mayo, curry powder, chicken chunks, green apple cubes and halved red grapes. Spread in a mini whole-wheat pita and add mixed greens.

Classic Cucumber Sandwich – Do not peel entire cucumber, peel alternating stripes leaving half of the skin. Slice cucumber into rounds. Mix cream cheese with a little garlic powder and parsley, spread onto wheat cocktail bread, top with cucumber round, sliced water chesnuts, alfalfa sprouts and another slice of bread.

Carrot-Cheddar Beef Sandwich – Spread mayo on a white tea roll, top with sharp cheddar cheese, a carrot ribbon, roast-beef and horseradish (This recipe is for Hubster).

Spicy Tuna Salad Roll – Mix together canned tuna, dollop of sour cream, horseradish, chopped celery, minced onion, and fresh cilantro. Serve on a crusty tea roll.

Egg Salad Sandwich - Chop hard-boiled eggs and mix with plain yogurt, mayo, lot’s of fresh dill, carrot shreds, sliced water chestnuts. Serve on pumpernickel cocktail bread. Garnish with fresh alfalfa sprouts.

Crab Salad Sandwich - Mix together jumbo lump crab meat with diced red bell pepper and Dijon mustard.  Serve on a multi-grain wheat roll or multi-grain cocktail bread.

For Amelia’s bridal shower, I broke a cardinal rule of baking. That is, never bake something for an audience that you’ve never attempted before. My layered cake baking was an experiment to see how hard it actually is to make a cake with more than two layers. It’s quite difficult and despite my best effort it was clearly an amateur job! It did taste quite good, though.

For the cake batter, I tripled the Better Homes and Garden cookbook’s yellow cake recipe. (The cake could have easily served 60 people).  In between each layer, I smothered apricot filling on top of almond buttercream frosting.

Each layer needed to be leveled with a cake leveler. This is an inexpensive Wilton cake tool that shaves off the top of each cake to smooth it out for even placement of the layers. Also, I had to put wax paper underneath the bottom of the cake to collect all the crumbs during assembly.

Layers four of six in place. Did I mention I forgot the baking soda in the bottom layer, essentially making it a pound cake? It was a little bit of baking serendipity however, since it was the perfect flat launch pad for the rest of the cake.

All six layers in place, with only slight spillage of the apricot filling. One other thing I did during assembly: to keep the cake moist, I boiled two cups water with two cups sugar in a saucepan, and added lemon rind. Using a pastry brush, I brushed this concoction on top of each layer before frosting.

With the almond buttercream frosting in place, it’s time for sprinkles.

The sprinkles were clear and white to lend the cake a shimmering, snow-like appearance.

Ribbon to match her shower colors was swept around each layer, and it was topped with an “A” for Amelia, or as my cousin more appropriately titled the cake later, “‘A’ for Effort!”

The cake in all its bridal shower glory. After spending 6pm-11pm on the cake, I was just glad to get it to the shower in one piece.  After a serious second grade cake dropping mishap at my birthday party, I never quite trust myself carrying cakes.  (There’s nothing more embarrassing than blowing out birthday candles in HoHos because you dropped the cake on the kitchen floor).

And finally, to highlight some of the food the hostess prepared:

The tea sandwiches assortment of chicken salad, turkey and egg salad sandwiches.

Fabulous presentation of fruit skewers in painted terracotta pots, secured in place with clear marbles.

The glowing bride-to-be at the end of the shower.  Forgiving gal that she is, she understood that the slight leaning tilt of her shower cake only gave it more character.

Last month my sister-in-law traveled from Edmonton to VA for her baby shower. Here was the spread:

Flowers and decor by Sara.

All of the food was served on sticks. Grilled chicken and steak kebabs were offered with a choice of four dips. Pictured above is an artichoke spread and peanut satay dip.

Then options three and four were basil herb and creamy horseradish.

My personal favorite was the creamy pumpkin dip, served with thinly sliced apples and a jumbo glass cookie jar of ginger snaps. Truly addictive.
Fabulous baby boy cake by Taryn. She created a lemon base with a light lemon frosting topped with a white chocolate ganache coating.

A photo of the frosting which was used for the party favors below…

Chocolate whoopie pies with peanut butter frosting.

Our church women’s group had a chocolate night this week, so I decided to make some delicious chocolate truffles! I had never made them before, but I was up for the challenge. I found a good recipe from one of my favorite cooking sites, epicurious.com, and I was ready to go. The truffles turned out great once they had a chance to sit in the fridge for a bit. The only problem I ran into was once I had them out of the fridge for a while, they started to get a little too melty and the texture wasn’t as nice. I skipped the step of adding the chocolate coating (I ran out of chocolate!), so I think if it had a separate coating on the outside it would have held up much better. They still tasted great though! These would be an awesome treat for a wedding or baby shower!

If you’d like to try your hand at making this delicious treat, you can find the recipe I used here.

I have this filed under a previous post, but it’s sort of hidden and I believe it’s worthy of it’s own post. This was a shower we did last summer for a good friend of ours, Kirsten. Their wedding colors were red and black, so I wanted to keep at least within the red theme. So the backdrop of the shower was white and then we had red accents in the floral arrangments, food, and plates. It was a really fun shower!

Here’s the menu:

White Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Angel Food Cake with Strawberries

Mini Chesse Pizzas

Tomato and Mozzarella Salad

Raspberry Tartlets

Mini Openfaced Sandwiches

Spanakopita

Beverages: Iced Tea, Raspberry Lemonade, Water

Hi everyone! A few months back we did a wedding shower for our good friends, William and Jessica. It was a lovely, elegant shower with some really great people. The wedding colors were chocolate, gold, and cream, so we decided to stay with that color scheme for the shower. We gave away rosemary bundles tied with mini chocolate ribbons and candles wrapped in chocolate ribbon for favors.

The Menu:

• Chocolate Chai Spice Cupcakes (recipe courtesy Cupcake Bake Shop)
• Honey-Almond Puff Pastry bites
• Fresh Berries
• Prosciutto wrapped Asparagus
• Honey and Poppyseed Salad (from my dear friend Annie)
• Salmon Pastry Bites

I’ll be posting my recipes for the Honey-Almond Puff Pastry bites and Salmon Pastry bites soon. If you just can’t wait, contact me using the form found here and I’d be happy to share!

More photos below by my lovely sister-in-law, Juliane. Thank you, Juliane!