Vintage Baseball Party: Food

I wanted to post a few more pictures of the fun party we had for Brian and tell a little about the food I served. This is, after all, a food blog! Because I was so busy doing all the decorations, and I had to haul everything up to his parents house 30 minutes away, I decided that I would not do the food myself. I also knew, that despite the fact that I was doing a baseball theme, I would not be serving hot dogs. When I first thought of doing this party months ago I thought it would be fun to get Mil Jugos, the Venezuelan restaurant Brian loves, to cater. Brian loves the food and the country and I knew he would love sharing that with all his friends. I thought for a second that people might not like it, but the food is pretty mild. I ordered chicken and beef arepas, a variety of empanadas, and rice and beans. Everyone loved it. You top it off with their special sauces and it is a sure treat!




For dessert I thought simple cupcakes and homemade chocolate ice cream would do the trick. I wanted to decorate the cupcakes somehow to incorporate them into our theme. We did these the morning of the party, so didn't have time to do anything too elaborate. My mom was helping me with the cupcake project and she said that when we were little and she would make cupcakes for our birthdays, long before they were popular, and she would put stickers on toothpicks and stick them in the top of the cupcake. We always had the best birthday parties! We ran with that idea and I cut out little pennate flags and mom hot glued them to toothpicks. I think they turned out darling!


I tried out two new recipes for the cupcake frosting. The vanilla buttercream frosting recipe came from the book More From Magnolia. It is recipes from Magnolia Bakery in New York. I was there on one of my trips and the line for their treats was out the door and around the corner. (Pictured below) Definitely worth the wait! I found the recipe online here . It tasted great, I didn't adjust the recipe at all. However, it says for two dozen cupcakes, and I only used about half for my two dozen. I used a generous amount too! I kept the frosting in the fridge for a week and used the rest of the frosting to frost birthday cupcakes for a friend. Worked perfect!

Besides cupcake toppers, mom's other job was finding a chocolate frosting recipe. She finally decided to just use the one of the back of the Hershey's cocoa box. We did, and it was delicious. We used quite a bit more powdered sugar than it calls for so the frosting would be thicker. We kept adding the sifted powdered sugar until the frosting was a lighter color of brown. (Sifting will help with the lumps.) But if you add to much the frosting loses it shine. We found that the perfect consistency will ribbon off the back of a spoon, in nice, thick strands. I'm posting the recipe as is on the box, add at least a cup or two more of sugar to thicken. Delicious.
Hershey's Chocolate Chocolate Frosting:
1/2 Cup butter
2/3 Cup Hershey's cocoa
1/3 Cup milk
1 Tsp vanilla
3 Cups powdered sugar
Melt butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating on medium speed to spreading consistency. Add more milk if needed, stir in vanilla. (Makes about 2 Cups)