Bridal Shower Cake

Today I had the pleasure of attending a bridal shower for a lovely young woman from my church. One of my friends was organizing the shower and had asked me several months ago if I would mind making the cake for her. Of course I told her that I'd be happy to do it. I had her give me an idea of what the colors/theme were going to be for the shower so I would know what direction to start thinking. She sent me a text message with a picture of the plates with the reassurance that I had no creative boundaries and I could make whatever kind of cake I wantedflavor/design-wise.

She was planning on only having around 15-20 women at the shower so I didn't think that making a 8 or 9 inch cake would be enough to feed everyone. (I have serious issues with always thinking that there won't be enough cake for everyone) I decided to do a rectangle shaped cake and then just make three or four layers . Since I don't have professional/industrial size cake pans I used my handy dandy 9x12 glass casserole pan. I made the layers in batches because not all of my 9x12 pans are the exact same shape and I didn't want to have to cut the cake to make it uniform on all the sides. I used a boxed cake mix and made my own icing for in between the layers and on the outside.

We ended up with a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing and then a regular white buttercream icing on the outside. To decorate the cake I tried something that I've never done before and I don't even know what the technical term is for what I did. I'll have to let the pictures speak for themselves. Overall I was really pleased with the way that the cake turned out.

The bride to be was very happy with the look/taste of the cake. I was so relieved that she liked it! Everyone else at the shower loved it as well. For some reason I always think the worst about the things that I bake. No one wants their cake to be the one that everyone talks about afterwards because it was so nasty or looked like garbage or whatever. I'm trying to work on that. I think that more experience I get the more confidence I'll have. I think that I'll probably continue decorating cakes this way because it really gives you freedom to use different colors, etc. Plus the style lent itself really well to me being a first timer and worried that I was going to mess it up.

This last picture is of the cake on the table at the shower. To the right are the napkins that I got my inspiration from. It's kind of hard to tell in this picture but I had put black dots all along the bottom of the cake to bring in the black from the napkins.