In which: the angel is in the details.
In which: damn you pinterest.
In which: buttercream for lunch.

So. We had a baby shower for a woman who works in Neel's lab this week, and for some ridiculous reason I offered to bring a cake. We've discussed this before, but I am not a baker. In these situations, you can do a couple of things (stop by a bakery being the first that comes to mind), and chose to pimp out a basic cake in the hopes that by making it look fabulous, you'd ignore its flaws.

Start here, with a super-easy cake recipe. If you're pressed for time or low on the skill set (cough cough) Dunkin Hines makes a nice cake mix. Trust me, no judgement here.

I knew I wanted a pink cake, so I thought I'd do a raspberry butter cream icing. So I bought some raspberries, thinking I'd puree them into the icing, but as I was baking, I thought it might be nice to have a raspberry filling in the cake. Found that recipe here.

I saved some of the raspberries from the puree and stirred them into a basic buttercream icing, so I'd be in the pink (Baby Girl!), and that recipe was here.

But the whole problem that started this was this gorgeous cake from Spoon Fork Bacon. Get a load of this. I may not be able to pull off a Rosewater Cake, but I might just be able to manage some raspberries coated in glitter. Everything tastes better with glitter.

Updated to add (because I think when I'm in the car and I had to drive Neel to work this morning): I think the point of this post is that you can take pretty much any cake you want and make it your own. Store bought, homemade, cake mix, whatevs. If you have a gluten-free cake recipe or mix that you like, go for it. This is where the angel is in the details. Also, I got the glitter at Michael's. I had pink and gold. I dumped the pink into the icing and it just barely gave it some extra shimmer. For the raspberries, I poured some of the gold glitter into a bowl and rolled the raspberries in the bowl. It helps if they're dry. I also need to say that the kitchen was a complete wreck when I was done, and Neel did the dishes! I'm a lucky woman.

So there you have it. Perfectly pink, perfectly sparkly to welcome a perfect little girl into the world. And the moral of the story is this: From a box or from a bowl, pimp your cake and let the good times roll.

I know I go on ad infinitum about my headaches, and I promise not to do that here. Not really. But if my US friends have seen that commercial where the woman keeps saying "My asthma's not that bad..." and her family and friends say things like, "You never play with me." and "You keep missing work," I have to tell you: I can relate.

I'd bumped back on a medication I take everyday to prevent migraine, and I'd thought it was no big deal to go from two doses to one. Until last week when I realized, "I'm having a lot of headaches." So I'm bumping back up. Heaves sigh.

That's not what this post is about. Not really. But because I'm frequently fighting a headache or simply feeling tender about getting one, I'm a non-frequent attender to cocktail hour around our parts. Huge bummer. And yet, just because I'm not partaking in the cocktail part of cocktail hour, doesn't mean that I don't want to feel celebratory or special. So for awhile now I've been thinking about creating some sort of non-alcoholic punch that we could pull out for me (and Cal) to enjoy when a gin and tonic just won't work.

As you can see from above, I started with a super-easy blueberry simple syrup. I've been playing with simple syrups for nearly a year now (my friend Marianne and I are regularly exchanging ideas for concoctions), and this is about as basic as you can get. Mash a handful of blueberries and combine with equal parts water and sugar (I used a 1 cup to 1 cup ratio). Boil until the sugar dissolves, and it'll turn this lovely blue color! Let it cool and you're ready for the next part. It'll keep for a couple weeks in the fridge.

Using the Blueberry Simple Syrup as a base, I created two different punches, just to see if there was one I liked better than the other. Here we have a Blueberry-Grapefruit Fizz

And this is a Blueberry Pomegranate Soda.

Truthfully, as far as liking them goes, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other, I guess. Depends on your mood. I like the tartness of the Grapefruit Fizz, but Neel can't have grapefruit, so that may not go into regular rotation here. The Pomegranate Soda is definitely tasty, but I don't love that muddled color that some pom sodas can have (This was pom mango, which I used because I wanted a little more depth than simple pomegranate juice, and that may have impacted the color a bit.)

All in all, either punch met my needs. Easy to make, easy to keep on hand and properly fun.

Here are the recipes.

Blueberry-Grapefruit Fizz

3 Tablespoons blueberry simple syrup
1/3 cup grapefruit juice
club soda

Fill an old fashioned glass with ice and add simple syrup and grapefruit juice. Top with club soda and stir. Garnish with blueberries and enjoy!

Blueberry-Pom Soda

2 Tablespoons blueberry simple syrup
1/4 cup pomegranate juice (I used pom-mango)
club soda

Fill an old fashioned glass with ice and add simple syrup and pomegranate juice. Top with club soda and stir. Garnish with blueberries and enjoy.

For now, I've mixed a batch of syrup (good on pancakes and waffles too) and juice to keep in the fridge, so all I have to do is add the club soda, and I'm good to go. And while the whole point of this exercise is to give me a treat when I'm not partaking in cocktails, let's face it: I don't feel bad all the time. It's easy enough to add a splash (or a few) of vodka, and then you'll have a proper party. I'm thinking pineapple juice next. How about it?

how to cheat at cake baking in one easy lesson {life}

punched {life}