Rubber Ducky Baby Sprinkle: The Food

Continuing in my series about the Rubber Ducky Baby Sprinkle I threw in April for my friend Jennie, today we’ll talk about the food.  I pretty much wiggled my way out of this one, except for one major except.  Also, I’m not responsible that people did not read the back of the invite that explicitly said it was a potluck because the inside of the invite ALSO said “Bring a dish”.  #notmyfault

Herein lies the greatest difficulty with entertaining for me: I’m not a great cook.  By no means do I deserve a slot on Worst Cooks in America or anything, but I’m scratch-made challenged.  I just don’t enjoy cooking like some people do, so I decided that the easiest way to do this, and keep my costs down (HA!) was to make the sprinkle a pot-luck.  But I figured I should supply drinks and desserts.  The second problem: the most economical cake decorator I know is Jennie.  This entire theme and everything was a surprise to her (she saw NONE of this until she showed up at the park) and she’d expressed that she just wanted to arrive and enjoy, so I couldn’t exactly ask her to decorate her own baby sprinkle cupcakes.  I was going to just buy some from a professional until I realized the expense, so I decided that I’m decent enough to bake some cupcakes and do some basic decorations.  As for drinks, blue berry Hawaiian Punch + 7-Up and some floating rubber ducky = DONE. (too bad the rubber duckies in the punch didn’t actually float upright…).  I mentioned in a previous post, but since all I had on hand was a clear & orange drink dispenser, I just used the Rubber Ducky ribbon to dress it up a bit.  Let’s just call the spigot the duck’s beak, shall we?

After perusing Amazon for what was available and Pinterest for ideas, these are what we ended up with.  The Rubber Ducky Cupcake Picks, Wilton Rubber Ducky Baking Cups, and white Sixlets all came from Amazon and I got the blue raspberry cake mix from Walmart on sale for 90¢ each!  Because Jennie is a baker and I was already using a box cake mix, I decided to bite the bullet and take out my KitchenAid Stand Mixer to make buttercream frosting from scratch according to Jennie’s recipe.  This was a big deal because… the KitchenAid had never been taken out of the box.  The box was still sealed, in fact.  Since I bought it for myself as a Christmas gift during a Black Friday sale… in 2010.  Yes, I KNOW!  Though the process was mostly smooth, there may have been a comical amount of powdered sugar all over me at one point that thankfully Lorenza and Rachel did not photograph on pain of death.  But I’d say they came out well, right?

They must have been good, because Jennie said several people asked if she made them, and I know her mom asked me if I made Jennie decorate her own cupcakes for her baby shower, to which I was faux-offended at the notion!  In hindsight I wish I would have baked them in plain cups and then placed them into the rubber ducky ones as a decorative liner, but all things considered they weren’t awful.  I also used butter flavored Crisco in the frosting and I’d skip the butter flavored variety next time.  Jennie gave me a recipe that used shortening and water instead of cream and butter since I told her I’d be decorating them the night before and knowing we’d be outside at a park.  I used her alternative recipe for buttercream frosting using butter and cream a couple weeks later and I know it tasted much better!

I bought the tiered cupcake stand as an add-on item from Amazon for just under $5 (though it’s up to $6.33 now).  I did not want to use the Cricut to make something that would be flimsy, and the price was right on this.  It didn’t fit all of the cupcakes, but luckily I’d bought 3 Mainstays Non-Stick Cupcake Pan with Lids to accommodate baking 4 dozen (I only owned 1 tin) for a steal at Walmart (they were actually the cheapest ones at about $8 each) so we just stored the extra dozen that wouldn’t fit until I made Jennie take them home after the party!

That’s all, Folks

Other posts in the Rubber Ducky Baby Shower series:

• Rubber Ducky Baby Sprinkle
• Rubber Ducky Baby Sprinkle: The Invitations
• Rubber Ducky Baby Sprinkle: The Decorations
• Rubber Ducky Baby Sprinkle: The Favors
• Rubber Ducky Baby Sprinkle: The Clothes