Bridal Shower!!

We are getting married in 4 months! Technically it was 4 months on July 24, but who's counting? :-D Matthew and I are starting to get really excited about the big day now that's it's in clear site! It's crunch time people! And by crunch, I mean crunches because we will be on the beach in t-minus 4 months. Maybe it was a bad idea to make so many dang cake balls the other day. Oh well, speaking of weddings and sweet deliciousness...

So I am making desserts for my sister's best friend's bacherlorette party this weekend. The theme is Marie Antoinette which I could either nail and get the theme perfectly or could fail miserably. Here are some of my inspirations so far...


 I love this cake...maybe I'll use a chunk of it?

 Pink and blue cupcakes?

Ok so I absolutely love this picture! Who wouldn't want to lay on a chaise lounge in a room full of cake??

So here's what I'm thinking...close your eyes and imagine the sweetness.....
A two tiered round cake with similar details to the first picture of the giant cake. Let's say maybe the bottom tier is chocolate with a chocolate ganache filling and the top tier is vanilla with a strawberry cream filling all covered in vanilla buttercream. This will sit on a Tiffany blue cake stand and will be surrounded by 2 small cake stands covered in pale blue and pale pink cupcakes with chocolate covered strawberry cake balls scattered all around. 

Thoughts??? 


Ok, so here's what actually went down....
I was sick all weekend, but I hung in there and got the job done. (my hands are raw from constantly washing them by the way) I ended up making a two tiered cake, cupcakes, and a few cake balls. Here are the results...


This is the cake...
The top tier is vanilla cake with strawberry cream filling and the bottom tier is chocolate with chocolate ganache filling. The whole cake was covered with strawberry cream frosting. My original plan was to use butter cream for the frosting, but I made two batches and both, for some reason, didn't turn out. I had strawberry cream filling left over from the vanilla cake and had no choice but to turn it into the frosting because it's all I had. I hated to use it because it makes it hard to cut the cake when the frosting isn't firm. It was a pretty color pink, though, so I guess it turned out alright. 

I also made cupcakes...
These are vanilla cupcakes and strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Here's a little tip that I didn't find out until I made the mistake myself with these cupcakes: if you use cream cheese frosting on cupcakes, either add more powdered sugar to thicken it or keep the cupcakes in the fridge once frosting is added. I learned this on this little adventure....I made pretty little swirls of cream cheese with edible pearls and gumpaste bows. After I walked outside and sat them down in my car, the frosting slumped and slid to one side of each cupcake. The result was a not so pretty cupcake. I tried to rig them the best I could once I got to the shower site, but I still wasn't pleased with the result. I'm a perfectionist...what can I say??

Finally, I made strawberry cake balls with cream cheese frosting and white chocolate coating. I, sadly, was a little disappointed with these as well. The cake balls I made a few weeks ago were amazing and I was so pleased that I thought I could do no wrong with these. The only thing I did differently this time was coating them with white chocolate. I used the same amount(2 large bars), but got totally different results. I was able to cover all 50 cake balls 2 weeks ago with the milk chocolate, but only 16 this time with the white chocolate. It didn't cover as smoothly either. I was hoping to make more than 16 obviously, but just couldn't get them to look like I wanted. I used my airbrush kit to color a few of them pale pink to match the color scheme. They tasted fine, but, again, I'm a perfectionist and just can't be satisfied with an imperfect cake ball :-)

So, what did I learn from this experience....baking is hard if you aren't at your best. Mistakes are made and it gets way more frustrating than it needs to be. At the end of the day, all you can do is try your best and keep washing your hands! Until next time....