Mommy Talk: Allison from AKA Gourmet

Good Morning! I’m excited to kick off Mommy Talk today! Mommy Talk is a space that I’m opening up on here for other mommies and women to share their experiences about how they make time to fill themselves up so they can be the best they can be for their families.

If you are interested in sharing at any point, I’d love to hear from you. I’m looking for two parts for these guest posts. 1. What does “me time” look like for you and how do you prioritize it? 2. Pick a Mommy’s Me Time topic from the categories and share a recipe, workout, project, ect. Your post would be featured on the day of the week when we normally talk about that topic. Email me at ambermkuiper@gmail.com if you’re interested.

To get Mommy Talk started off on the right foot, my dear friend Allison has graciously agreed to share her heart and experience transitioning from a working to a stay-at-home mom and how her lovely cupcake business, AKA Gourmet, serves as her “me time.” My friendship with Allison stems back to the early days of elementary school. It’s been fun to see our relationship come full circle, now having kids of our own. Since her kiddos are just a little older than mine, I often go to her for advice and questions and always leave our conversations feeling refreshed and energized. She was also one of the first people I shared my vision for Mommy’s Me Time with and she’s has been a champion for me as I’ve started this blog. Thank you Allison for sharing today and for being an amazing friend and encourager!

Check out AKA Gourmet on Facebook and become a fan! Her cupcakes are some of the best you’ll ever taste! She’s always coming up with new flavor and frosting combinations that are unique and delicious.

Please join me in welcoming Allison and her beautiful family to Mommy’s Me Time! She has also generously shared some baking tips with us at the end of the post, so be sure to check those out as well!

Hello Mommy’s Me Time Readers! I have been a stay at home mom for just over a year now, and I feel like I have finally found my groove. I worked full time for the first four and half years that my husband and I were married while he went to under grad and grad school to graduate with his Doctoral Degree as a Physical Therapist. I always joked that I was “working him through school and was going to ‘retire’ as soon as he was done.” What a blessing that I was able to do just that and stay home with our two children! We have two very busy children. Kaylee is 4 and Luke is 17 months.

I have always been a very scheduled person, kind of a perfectionist to some. 🙂 I thrived in the demanding and stressful job I held while we lived in Des Moines, so going from that to staying at home was a bit of an adjustment. My agenda was no longer my own, I had to change my way of thinking to what my children needed first, then came housework, running errands (mostly groceries), and cooking meals. I had no idea how much my life in the working world had become “mine” and I no longer seemed to have any time to myself.  Please don’t get me wrong, I LOVE every minute of it, but there is something about having even just moments to yourself that refresh and re-energize you! I was missing that.

An opportunity came for me to start a cupcake business out of our home. This had always been a “someday” dream for me, hoping 5-10 years down the road when the kids are school-aged I could make it happen. Someone asked if I could bake a large quantity of cupcakes for an event and I excitedly and nervously rose to the occasion. That event led to more orders and before I knew it, I had a small business. My son still takes a morning nap, and that’s the time of day (conveniently) my daughter likes to self-entertain. She’d rather play with her dolls than me in the morning, and have “mommy-time” in the afternoon. This time in the mornings and some evenings when Nick is home or the kids are in bed is my time to bake, create, and develop new recipes. It’s my time. My husband is amazingly supportive and a great critic. He is honest when helping me settle on new recipes and always encouraging me. I couldn’t do it without him. I make everything completely from scratch, and it has taken me a while to develop my menu, but I’m proud of it. I’m constantly searching for new ideas and trying new things. It’s been such an encouragement and refreshment in my life!

On days I don’t have orders, I get my housework done, have fun crafting time with the kids, have extra snuggle time, and try to get ‘out and about’ so we aren’t stuck inside all day. The nice thing about the cupcake business is that now that I’ve been doing it a while, the whole process doesn’t take very long; even if I have an order, it doesn’t take up much of my day. I never feel like I’m neglecting my children, husband, or house to get an order done, and it makes me feel so good!

Baking Tips:

For those who love to bake, here a few things that took me a while learn:

*Know your oven! My oven bakes HOT. Like, I need to drop the temp of most recipes about 25* and shorten baking times. We threw out a lot of cupcakes in the beginning because they were over done.

*If a recipe says to let ingredients get to room temp, they mean it! It makes such a difference in the consistency of the final product

* If you forget to set butter out to get to room temp, don’t microwave it. It gets too soft, and you’ll get some liquid. That can really throw your consistency. One thing I’ve done is use a cheese grater and grate the cold butter into shreds. It mixes much closer to the way room-temp butter does.

* Keep trying. If you mess up a recipe or don’t have a success the first time around, figure out what you don’t like about the final product and try to adjust.

* If cutting a recipe in half or doubling it, write down the amounts. Mental math has failed me a few too many times, chocolate cupcakes sunk down in the middle aren’t exactly appetizing. 🙂

* Have fun! I’ve only been in business for about 9 months, but it still excites me! I feel like if that ever changes, I’m not meant to be in business anymore. There is just something great about loving what you do. I get to do two things I love. Bake and be home with my children.