Little Ivy Cakes

A Summer Baby Shower
So, my friend, Tara is due to have a baby boy very soon. I think her due date is August 8th. It really seems like it was just yesterday when she told me that she was pregnant though. Crazy!

I was so excited and decided to plan a baby shower for her. Of course the first thing I did to prepare was gather up some menu options and e-mail them to Tara. Haha! So here are some adventures in baby showering. :) I hope the attempt in creating something special for Tara was Successful.

( Tara and her baby to be)

DECORATIONS: The theme was light and summery: blues, greens, yellow. Flowers, glass beads, and buttons on the table with little baby toys here and there that serve as decorations and little toys for the baby.



We played...
Baby Scatergories
Guess how big the belly is-everyone cuts a piece of string guessing how big the mother's pregnant belly is-whoever is the closest to the actual measurement wins.
Guess the mystery baby food flavors. You buy like 3 jars of weird baby flavors and cover the labels, then everyone tastes them and tries to guess what the flavors are. One of the flavors was Banana-cinnamon-granola. fancy. :)

And last but not least THE FOOD...

Amy and Bryan's Special Secret Cheese fondue with artisan breads and golden apples.

This appetizer was sooo good! I love it every time Bryan and Amy make it!!!
I kept begging them for the recipe but, they just won't give it out. LOL-means Hahahahaha:)

A fresh green side salad
Spring mix with baby spinach, grape tomatoes, cucumber, yellow bell pepper, poppy seeds and Girard's Champagne dressing. Oh and I put some red currants to decorate the salad.



Summer Zucchini Linguine


I found this wonderful summer pasta recipe from Stephanie's Kitchen HERE. I added a few things but, not much. I loved the pasta but it was a little on the bland side. Next time I will add more garlic or something.

Summer Linguine Recipe:
2 zucchini
3 small carrots
2 light colored and speckled zucchini
garlic
Parmesan cheese
1/4 lb. wheat fettuccine
1/2 lb. linguine


The Dessert was Peach blueberry tartelettes inspired from, who else but the wonderful Tartelette. I will admit, making these was not easy. I even e-mailed Tartelette to give me some tips which helped tremendously but would still not prepare me for a the crust-stress I went through.


The first crust batch I made followed Tartelette's recipe HERE exactly except I added 1/4 more of each ingredient so I could get more dough. The resulting dough seem nice and gathered well into a ball

But, when I started working with it, grease was leaking out and the dough was cracking. I added some blueberry vodka to see if some liquid would help the dough stick to itself better. I was able to use this dough for the bottom crusts but it was a bit tricky. I made 12 cupcake circles and then ran out of dough so I made another batch for the top of the tartelettes. Imade the second batch without almonds thinking they were the problem. I got this dough below which was too sticky and I had to add more flour which helped only a little.

The dough was very fragile and hard to work with which was super frustrating because I was trying to make pretty tartelette pie-covers. I may have been rolling too thin though. I started making the dough strips thicker toward the end and it helped.

While baking the bottom shells, I made the fruit. I did it exactly how Tartelette does it HERE but with different fruit.
Here's what I did:
1 pint diced nice firm but ripe peaches
1 pint blueberries
juice from one lemon
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tb. cornstarch
-In a heavy saucepan, combine all the ingredients and heat over medium until the blueberries release their juices and the whole mix start to thicken, about 10 minutes. Let cool to room temperature



-Fill cooled shells with fruit up to the top.

Cover fruit with crust designs as desired.
I didn't do all covered tops but they seemed to come out the best. Some of the ones I decorated with a latticed crust cracked a little and didn't look as pretty. All in all I was able to make 12 tartelettes and 9 survived "perfectly" or good enough to serve. Hahaha.


Thanks to SHINY and AMY for helping me get everything together, I don't know what I would do without you.
Thanks to KRYSTAL who organized getting those big important things that Tara needed. And thanks to everyone who came, you are all so wonderful! :)

THE END!