Hedgehogs, Grizzlies, and Trout . . . Oh My

A round 10:20 p.m. last Friday, I was standing in my parents’ kitchen, despairing over a bowl of half-beaten egg whites.

For those of you who’ve been following my baking column recently, you’ll remember I tackled macarons a few weeks ago. That adventure gave me some confidence in the meringue department, so it was with great anticipation and far too little concern that I started on my sister’s baby-shower cake that Friday evening.

This sister, sibling No. 2, is due in about a month with her first. Not only is it her first baby, this little one is the first grandchild and the first nephew. And in a delightful turn of events, this baby shower was held almost exactly one year since the last shower we threw: sibling No. 2’s bridal shower. My parents don’t often throw massive parties, but over the years, they’ve exemplified for me how to truly welcome people into your home. It doesn’t mean Martha Stewart-esque table settings or expensive food, because, as the hosts of one of my favorite podcasts recently pointed out, there’s a difference between true hospitality and entertaining. One mindset brings others in and makes them feel at ease, the other tends to be about showing off.

This shower was, in short, a delightful exercise in the art of delegation (something I’ve been working on for years), and a wonderful flurry of teamwork from my prep team — my splendid sisters, mother, cousin, and aunt, who made the day go swimmingly. Simple as I’d kept the menu, we were still making most everything from scratch, the house needed to be set up to hold over 30 people, and how we were going to decorate was still an unanswered question.

But back to my meringue. Thanks to Pinterest, I’d suggested a woodland theme for the shower, and sibling No. 2 agreed wholeheartedly. And, in an amusing twist of fate, the cake I’d decided to make as the centerpiece was the same one her husband had planned to make for her birthday the previous month. My sisterly claims won out, however, and I began researching how to make a stump-like cake.

Given my poor track record with fully iced cakes, I opted for a chocolate “bark” look, meringue mushrooms, donut-hole hedgehogs, and edible moss for the décor. The cake and icing base were a no-brainer, since I’d had such success with Claire Saffitz’s NYT Cooking recipe, and I packed up all the necessary ingredients — along with too many other items — for the hour drive home.

Please keep in mind, dear reader, that not only was it a Friday evening and I was coming off a full week of work, I was also prepping for Mother’s Day on Sunday.

As is my wont, I didn’t actually start making the cake until around 8 p.m., and I discovered too late that we were fresh out of milk — an essential component of the icing. No problem, I thought. I’ll make the cake layers tonight, and the meringue mushrooms, then pop to the store early in the morning for milk. It’s safer to assemble the cake the day-of anyway, right? Yes, but not when you also need to share the kitchen with two sisters and a friend to whom you must give continuous direction as they construct hedgehogs, sausage rolls, and cheeseballs.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I made the most rookie of all mistakes that Friday night: I set my kitchen scale to the wrong measurements. This may have been why I ruined one batch of meringue batter and the second one took over 20 minutes to beat into stiff peaks. And it wasn’t until after standing over the kitchen mixer for many anxious minutes that I read the rest of the mushroom recipe, which said, effectively, “Now bake for two hours.” I glanced at the clock: 11 p.m.

Rats.

I managed to stay awake until midnight, at which point I decided enough was enough, turned off the oven (with the mushrooms still inside, cooling down), and went to bed. This is probably why, though incredibly cute, they were still sticky in the morning, so I promptly tossed them back in the low-temp oven for another hour. Did the stems come out more golden than white? Yes, they did. Mushrooms in God’s creation come in all shapes and colors, thank you.

Saturday morning, though we started early, was quite the flurry of activity. Everyone in my line of sight, from brother to aunt to family friend, enjoyed continual conscription into some duty or other. We weren’t frantic, but there certainly wasn’t time to rest. And no time to let my chocolate “bark” cool correctly, either.

Achieving the bark effect is a very clever trick, actually, consisting of melting chocolate, spreading it thinly between sheets of parchment paper, rolling said parchment paper up, and chilling the chocolate in the fridge for about 30 minutes. I was, unfortunately, rushing the process, both out of eagerness to see how it looked and fear of those early party arrivals. When you unroll the parchment paper, your chocolate is supposed to break into shards, perfect for creating a textured look on your cake. Thanks to my impatience, the chocolate was still soft and didn’t crack well, and after I surrounded the cake’s exterior with choice pieces, everyone gasped (and giggled) as the tips started to curl over in the room’s heat.

Into the fridge it went, where I prayed it would firm up before I had to pull it out again and finish the decorations.

Somehow, despite pulling sausage rolls from the oven ten minutes before guests started arriving, and the fact that we were still plating veggie cups as guests walked in, we hostesses all managed to change into party clothes and set out bowls of “rainbow trout” without too much delay.

It was a delightful gathering, full of beautiful women celebrating my sister and her new little one. The cake, I’m happy to say, was much admired, and there was a bit of mourning as I went to cut it. Delicious as it was, by evening I was done with cake and meringue for the day and chose to binge instead on chocolate Teddy Grahams.

Or as we call them: grizzly bears.