Bride-to-be!

Hey guys and welcome back! Last weekend was such a busy weekend! I took on two projects, a bridal shower and a birthday scheduled on the same day! I created all the desserts for Janine's future sister-in-laws bridal shower and even made a small funky zebra cake for one of my loyal Instagram followers (how cool)! I know it does not seem like very much but let me tell you that having to make everything fresh for the same day gets quite challenging, especially when you are a perfectionist. 

Lets get to sharing! The bridal shower had no theme and no particular story just a blank canvas for Janine and I to come up with some creative ideas and have our own personal aesthetic shine through. I love when the client leaves this part up to me. I love having free range of what will be on the menu and how it will be presented. Lets break it down... 

The Menu: (click the links below for recipes)
1.Raspberry and Almond French Macarons 
2. Chiffon Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting 
3. Dulce De Leche Cupcakes 
4. Powdered Buttermilk Donuts - Janines creation! 

Macarons are my new favorite thing to make! My fears of making them are definitely over, they came out just right! We chose the color scheme: white, soft pink and gold. I think there is nothing more feminine than this color palette. I did a classic Swiss buttercream with pink coloring for all sandwiches and the pink macarons are colored and flavored with raspberry. Also, how perfect is this tea cup stand my mom had! It really tied back in to our overall color scheme so well. 

In every love story, there is tragedy. Even with cake, there is tragedy. I figured out that sometimes I need to say "NO". I can't help it though, I am such a "yes" person. Anyway, my reason for saying all of this is because I agreed to make the fondant cake pictured below out of Dulce De Leche cake. I knew in my heart that this was going to be a challenge and I will tell you why. Dulce de Leche cream is a soft caramel-like consistency, very thin and usually messy. It often drips out of the sides of any normal cake. The actual cake part is also a very light, delicate consistency, too. So you can understand my fear of having to put a sticky, heavy covering such as fondant on top of it. I tried it anyway because I was told the Bride loves Dulce De Leche. I just couldn't say no. To my surprise (at first, anyway) the cake was looking good! I even painted some gold luster dust on the bottom, a technique that is new to me. That was even a success! Great, lets keep the ball rolling! 

UNTIL a few hours later I went to check on my beautiful baby - the entire cake appeared to be crumbling down from the inside causing the outside fondant to ripple and in some areas rip! OMG, OMG... don't panic right?! Wrong! I panicked! This definitely slowed down my productivity for a while. Thankfully, Janine came to my rescue! She had just gotten off from work but was ready to pull up her sleeves and get down to business. She is just so good like that! After my Dulce De Leche disaster the last thing I wanted to do was make Dulce De Leche cupcakes but sometimes "you gotta dust that dirt off your shoulders" right? So I stopped feeling sorry for myself and I went ahead to make the cupcakes.They were super easy, I bought this nifty little cupcake corer from Wiltons - cored the cupcakes, squeezed the Dulce de Leche cream inside and covered them with a little swirl of frosting. We finished them off with these delicate pink cutout cupcake liners from Martha Stewart. 

Okay, at this point we were on a roll, things were back in motion. We had 45 beautiful macarons, 50 adorable little cupcakes - all done! What can go wrong at this point. While I was trying to conjure up a simple cake recipe for the new fondant cake that needed to be the focal point (no pressure), Janine maned the donuts! We have been SO excited about these donuts for a while now! Janine found these adorable little gold and glittered diamond picks on Etsy. Look at how clever and sweet! 

And now, for the grand finale at 3 o'clock in the morning - the infamous cake! I went with a classic chiffon-like cake. I also decided to coat and fill the cake with a nice thick layer of cream cheese icing. Everyone loves cream cheese icing and it provides a nice crumb coat for fondant. I laid the fondant right over the cake and I am not sure if it was my neurotic self that day but for some reason it was not smooth especially on the bottom. Maybe it was because it was 3 am and I had been baking for almost 20 hours straight but I definitely experienced my first rough day in the kitchen. Nonetheless, I carried on... I decided to finish it off with a nice thick ribbon of fondant on the bottom and painted the gold luster dust over it. I also used some little fondant circles I made earlier in the day to give the cake some polka dots! That was the original plan but at 3 in the morning I almost forgot about them. I quickly repainted them and stuck them on the cake. In the end, I think it came out adorable. I was pretty happy with the results - it reminded me of Kate Spade!

Overall, I was SO pleased with the results and so was the Bride-to-be and her family. All the Facebook comments and messages made me just get the tingles inside. That is definitely why I do this! Please check out the gallery below for more pictures! You will even see a DIY banner I made ! Enjoy! 

I also wanted to share with you the other cake I made simultaneously with the craziness! Julia, one of my followers on Instagram requested a zebra cake with a HUGE blue bow for her birthday! Her favorite candy is Reeces and she loves peanut butter and Nutella. I made her the most scrumptious chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting, crushed up Reeces and a layer of Nutella! Sounds good right!? I was even more excited to receive an email from her mom with a video of her and 10 of her friends screaming out "Thank you Amanda, the cake is AMAZING!!" What is better than that? I can't wait to make her another one!

Thanks for dropping in! Until next time, xoxo!!