Can't believe that it's been a month since my last post. Things had been crazy in the past month, but I happened to enjoy doing all of those. Now that I am free from classes, I can start sharing my kitchen-related and not-so-related experiences.

I'd started planning a baby shower for my friend, Jocelin, way back then in March. As time went by, I realized that the word "planning" in this case was no more than agreeing on a date for the parents-to-be and us. Soon after Easter break, I was swamped with homeworks, projects, and exams. I was also prone to getting sick last semester when I was too tired, which made things worse. Right after the last final exam, I flew to California to join hubby who was already there. We stayed there for a week and got back late on Tuesday. My week was pretty much full since we watched Star Trek sneak peek on Wednesday after work. Hubby had bought the ticket months before we planned the shower. Since then, he couldn't wait for that day. So watching that Star Trek movie was a done deal. On Friday, I had a meeting in Nashville and a bible study. So, I only had Thursday and Saturday to work on the baby shower.

I am always nervous for events that involves inviting bunch of people. What if not many people come? If the food isn't enough? If the food isn't good? If the party is lame? Well, this time, I didn't really have time to worry about those things because I was trying to accomplish my looong to-do list. Hubby kept saying that I was wearing myself out by doing too much thing and he thought some of those were not necessary since I didn't have much time. Those were things that I thought would be great to have for a baby shower, although I agreed that we could have omitted those without hurting the essence of the party. Of course, among those were things needed to be detailed. Things that I enjoyed doing the most.

While hubby and I had talked about the main food during our vacation, the "extras" were last minute deal. After did some quick online research, I decided to make onesie cookies for the thank you favor, cake with owl fondant figurine, and
semar mendem or for this shower I called "rice in a baby blanket". I used
Joy of Baking's recipe for the onesie cookies and royal icing using meringue powder. I didn't have onesie cookie cutter, so I tailored them myself using tools I had. Not having a specific cookie cutters allowed me to create different shapes of baby clothes. I'll post another entry about this once I have chance to recreate this cookies. I also found some online tutorial of how to decorate cookies using royal icing, which looked simple until I tried doing it myself. Once again, I was reminded of the importance of practice to master anything. I couldn't believe it's hard even just to make a straight line.

For the cake, I used
Dorie Greenspan's vanilla cake, which only used egg whites. The butter cream is the reduced-sweetness version of
this recipe. I stuck slices of strawberries in between the cake layers and soon regretted it. The strawberries made the cake watery and hard to cover. For the decoration, I made an owl figurine out of gum paste since Jocelin likes owl. So I was pretty much in the kitchen the whole time on Saturday either baking, cooking, or chopping.

I finished everything just right before the scheduled time although some were not as good as I expected. Until now, I still couldn't believe I could finish the whole thing and still had time to...take a shower before the event! Haha... I didn't have time to snap "proper" pictures of what I made though. The whole apartment was like a mess and the smell of what I cooked stayed until the next day. Nevertheless, I was super pleased that everything went well and the parent-to-be looked so happy. We had a lot of leftover what would be enough for another party. So other than what I mentioned above, I made beef rendang, Chinese corn soup, and stir fried
gailan . My friends made fried chicken, cassava leaf
(daun singkong) with pork, fried vermicelli, and eggplant in a hot pot.
Now we are eager to see the baby that can come at anytime soon.