Baby Cookies and Cupcakes

I can’t even remember the last time I went to a baby shower and can count the ones I’ve been to on half a hand. However, I have admired many adorable cookies and cupcakes around this theme from other bloggers. I never had an opportunity to make any. Then two things happened.

First, a few weeks ago I saw this cupcake topper design from Loren over at The Baking Sheet. 

I thought it was one of the cutest baby themed toppers I have ever seen!

Second, my pediatric nurse sister in law is teaching a baby care seminar this week and asked me if I would bake something special for her class of 50.  My mind immediately went back to Loren’s fantastic design. I wrote her and asked if I could use her design and blog about it and she generously agreed. Thank you Loren! Seriously, if you have not checked out her blog yet. Do it now. She is an amazingly creative sugar artist. I particularly love her use of color.

My sister in law specifically requested cookies so for the first part, I went with onesies and baby bottles using it as an opportunity to practice my still pathetic decorating sugar cookies skills. I used both the sugar cookie and royal icing recipes from Bridget at Bake at 350. Both excellent.

Out of the 100s of cookies cutter I have, of course I have none with a baby theme. That’s what always happens to people who have tons of cookies cutters. Never have the ones they need at hand. After I stuck my tongue out at the bags and bins of cutters taking up huge space in my pantry, I found onesie and baby bottle graphics online. After printing them out, I glued them to an old plastic lid, cut out the shape, then used a knife to trace around the cookie dough.

The appliques on the onesies  were made from royal icing. I piped them out on parchment paper, let them dry completely and then adhered them to the onesies with wet royal icing. 

 

I made ducks for the blues onesies, adding a black non pareil for the eye and half of an orange sprinkle for the beak. Yay tweezers!

And daisies for the pink ones.

I had a bunch of sugar letters on hand so for the yellow onesies I added the words Baby with and little sugar star accent underneath.

Then I replicated Loren’s design for middle size cupcakes as an added surprise for my SIL. I have some liners I bought here in Germany which are a weird middle size, not minis and not regular. 

I put flowers on the blankets and made the babies multi culti.

For the cupcakes I used Magnolia Bakery’s recipes for vanilla cupcakes and vanilla buttercream.

The homemade fondant was homemade and colored using paste food coloring.

The cookies are a bit wonky. I definitely haven’t turned the corner yet on improving my cookie decorating skills but when I put the cookies and cupcakes all together on a platter, they looked festive and cute. I hope they will provide a nice lecture break for the attendees or at least a temporary sugar rush!