Summer's First Birthday Party

Summer had her first birthday party yesterday.

She won't turn one for another four days, but on the second I'll be with my mom driving through Kansas. So we did a little something yesterday.

I spend all my time making food and decorations and didn't get around to making Summer's mop of hair look good. Sorry, little girl.

After eating, we sang happy birthday to Summer and let her go at a cupcake. She really liked the frosting...

Finally, she figured out she cold eat the whole thing and gladly did so:

Then the dress went back on and we opened presents.

So that was Summer's first birthday party, and I think it's going to be her last. I don't like throwing parties. When people leave it's such a bummer because I don't feel like I really got the chance to talk to anyone, even when the party is small. In the future, we'll just have several separate birthday dinners with good friends, because making food and eating it with friends is awesome.

Okay, here are some recipes for those interested.

We ate Asian pasta salad:

Dressing:

1/3 c. red wine vinegar
1/3 c. soy sauce
1/2 c. oil (part sesame oil, part salad oil)
3 T. sugar
1/2 t. salt & pepper
1/4 c. toasted sesame seeds

Bowtie Pasta
red & yellow peppers, sliced
baby spinach
cilantro
chicken
almonds

Bean Dip with Chips:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/white-bean-dip-with-pita-chips-recipe/index.html

I forgot about the pita chips, so we just had them with tortilla chips. They would have been better with the pita chips.

We also had sliced strawberries. I have decided that, in the future, I'm always getting my fruit from costco unless I can sneak a sample before buying. Fruit at Costco is more expensive, but they've never sold me bad fruit.

For dessert, we had sugar cookies and strawberry vanilla cupcakes.

When I decided to make cupcakes, my only goal was to make a cupcake that Nathaniel liked. Nathaniel is not a sweets person. He enjoys them on occasion, but he could probably go his whole life without eating anything sweet and would be fine. Okay, well, I suppose most of us would be fine in that scenario, but you know what I mean.

Nathaniel is more than indifferent when it comes to cake. He's actively opposed to cake. When he is served cake, he usually refuses. Sometimes he accepts, though, and then is reminded why he usually refuses in the first place. So, if I was going to make cupcakes, I wanted them to be so good that Nathaniel would actually eat one. Why? I don't know. But that was my goal.

A while ago, I saw a today show clip and Giada made cupcakes topped with a strawberry glaze, which was just strawberry puree and powdered sugar. I thought a strawberry glaze sounded brilliant and so I decided to use that as my frosting. Then I decided on this recipe for the cupcakes:

http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/double_vanilla_cupcakes/

It turns out that recipe is ridiculously complicated. I spent all day making the dumb things. It probably would take most people less time, but I kept forgetting to buy ingredients and I had to go to the store to get them.

So then I made the strawberry glaze, which just tasted like powdered sugar (I used fresh, not frozen strawberries, btw). So I added 2/3 of a stick of butter, a little vanilla, and a little lemon juice, and much more powdered sugar. Sorry, that's all I know about that frosting.

Anyway, the cupcakes were a big hit. Nathaniel ate, like, three. But if you're going to do that cupcake recipe, I would skip the vanilla bean. The strawberry frosting (which was really incredible) will atone for any sins of the cupcakes.