Friday, January 20, 2012

School Days: Gender Reveal

Remember when I didn't want to make my friend Jen mad when we decorated her classroom for her birthday? The main reason that I wanted to keep her happy was because she is pregnant and was puking up a storm at the time. Jen is feeling less like the vomitnator now and more like the sleepinator, so things are moving up in her world.

Yesterday she found out the gender of her baby and said that I had one night to whip up some gender reveal cupcakes for her coworkers if I was still interested.  She couldn't hold her foaming-at-the-mouth teaching team back any longer than that. Still interested? Are you kidding me? I was hovering over the creamy vanilla cake batter with the pink coloring in the left fist and the blue coloring in the right fist.  


I followed the bake a heart in a cupcake tutorial here. Surprise! It is a boy!


OK, here's the skinny on those heart cupcakes.  With a mild amount of effort, you can see in the photo above that those are hearts.  You can see it because I cut perfectly down the center where I knew the hearts had the best chance of moist debut.  This is my only moment of glory with the hearts. This here -- shared with you.

I thought about stopping the first few cupcake recipients today.
Wait! Not like that!
Hold it with the '?' facing you!
OK, now shove exactly half in your mouth. Wider...more.
Yep, bite directly down the center.
Now what do you see?
<in mouth-full-of-cake dialect> It's a boy!
No Jackass! It's a heart! Throw me a bone here. Geez.


The excitement and joy we all shared for Jen would have still been there if I had just piped some blue creaminess into the centers. You don't need a heart to fill a cupcake with love people. Lesson learned.

Rules say 'no homemade items for the school kids' so we made little treat boxes to do a reveal for them with blue wrapped candy.


 The really got into it. I may have amped them up a little before hand too.

There were even some high-fives shared between my homeboys in the back row.  It means a lot for them to have another dude on the team I guess.


Jen is so smart. She made them ration the candy then take most of it home. She is going to be a great mom on so many levels.

Now, I just have a couple months to get going on some baby bow ties and suspender sets. I'm serious.