Planning our gender reveal party

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

When my wife told me we are having a gender reveal, I wasn’t particularly sure what it was. After much research, we decided that we will need to first set a date for the event as well a good time to do the baby scan for the gender reveal. You need to tell the doctor at the clinic who is doing your scan to not reveal the gender to you. All they need to do is to write down the gender in a sealed envelope so you can pass it to your baker (tell the baker to bake the colour of the gender inside the cake)

We specially ordered our gender reveal cake from Rack and Brew ~~ a Victorian sponge cake with blueberry cream ~~ as you can see – it is the pink and blue theme ~~ with the Victorian Sponge cake containing the actual gender colour ~ blue for boy and pink for girl! The Gula Melaka balls at the top are coated with desiccated coconut flakes ~~~ mmm ~~ be sure to resist the temptation to sneak peek – cos you really wanna eat the cake or know the gender asap ~~

We first ordered some of the decor and cake topper from Ali Express. Quite a lot of things you can buy that suit your gender reveal needs!

We also buy pink and blue cloth from local textile store to suit the theme.

We actually printed, cut and stuck these gender theme tags on white paper cups!

These colourful plates were actually from Daiso (sponsored by Sabrina and Becky)

These pink and blue utensils can be found easily in Brunei

Borrowed this from Denice~~ thanks! Suits the pink tablecloth~~

Borrowed this from Sabrina for the blue tablecloth ~

We initially wanted to do blue pea flower tea and strawberry milk but we realized it’s pretty troublesome, so we just got pink and blue straws – and made mocktails instead – funny story was we couldn’t find fresh mint the night before so we just made the drink without it – a mix of carbonated water, mango juice, orange juice and freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Since we got a nespresso machine and cuckoo water filter (with hot water function), we let the guests DIY the drinks themselves – providing nespresso capsules, packet 3-in1 drinks like milo and coffee, and lots of choices for tea ~~~

I love my wife’s idea of these Devondale milk cartons for our guests to add to their tea or coffee – and the colours matched the pink and blue theme too!

Pink and Blue mints for the guests ~~

I ordered these pink and blue cupcakes from Le Apple to match the theme as I don’t have the time to make them – choosing to focus on the savoury dishes for high tea.

I was browsing through my Instagram and came across these pretty cupcakes from Three Vanilla Pods and decided to order them too! So pretty right?!

We ordered these cute tarts from my friend Jenny who is super talented at making tarts! They taste really good and cute too! She currently doesn’t take orders and she’s making them as a favour.

Initially I wanted to freshly bake my own bread with blue pea flower but I decided to make my life easier by custom ordering them from Le Apple – so we got both blue and pink breads to suit the theme!

I have always love Japanese style sandwiches so this was a good opportunity to make these! The yellow and the blue seem to go well together and in my opinion – this will be the most delicious egg sandwich ever~~ (bias cos I stayed up all night to make the tamago ~~ but the fact that the guests finished 60 pieces of these in record time speaks volumes!)

I decided to also make a dill guacamole crabmeat sandwich with the pink bread since who doesn’t like guacamole?!

The simple tried and tested tuna sandwich ~~ my own recipe of course!

My wife got these gender reveal props from Ali Express and stuck them to the beautiful cupcakes!

Tadaa ~~ our high tea table is set! The balloons are a gift from the Humpday girls! The Rack and Brew Gender Reveal Cake centerpiece is of course the main question everyone’s attention is on ~~ when can we cut the cake?! We want to know the gender!

For the blue pasta – I used dried blue pea flowers to extract the blue colour to cook the pasta. This is my blue cheese (a less acidic cheese packed with awesome flavour) and pecans pasta. I didn’t add any onion or garlic for fear the pasta will turn purple as anything acidic will cause the blue to turn purple! (this can be a fun trick at parties where you add lemon or lime to your pasta to do colour changing pastas!)

For the pink pasta – I roasted some beets – then blend them with oven roasted tomatoes and pecans to make a beetroot pesto pasta.

I wasn’t planning on making a salad actually but my friends special request for salad so I had to brainstorm what sorta salad that will fit the blue and pink theme. In the end – I decided on a bulghur wheat (texture a bit like cous cous but it’s a healthy whole grain like quinoa) Asian style salad with most of the readily available fruits and vegetables that are pink and blue colour. In this salad – you will see rose apple (jambu air), roasted beetroot, pomegranates, pink guava, torch ginger flower, oven roasted tomatoes, basil leaves and blue pea flower (which are grown in my garden)

The addition of pecans for extra crunch and texture – and squeeze of several local lemon to add some tang. This salad has a good balance of different textures, fragrance and taste’s really good exceeding my expectations!

Peggie wanted to pose with the food ~~ haha

of course ~ remember to take lots of pictures for this important moment!

Fun fun photo sessions ~~

The trick to cutting is to use two knives to make a V shaped cut – be sure not to lift the knife out or the gender will be revealed. Then use a cake scoop to slowly lift the slice of cake to reveal the gender of the baby!