Tina Tot

Many months ago I was given the opportunity (and of course I gladly accepted) to make a cake for a great friend's bridal shower, whose wedding I just happen to be in as well. I knew this shower would have a few more guests than I am used to so I would have to step up my game a little. I hit send on my email accepting the challenge and immediately opened up Pinterest, my go-to idea website. So. Many. Good. Ideas. But learning from my most recent mistake {see cherry blossom post} I decided to make things easy on myself as there would be a lot of cake and cupcakes to make. As it turns out my lovely and talented roommate Amy was asked to make her invitations. Some of the other bridesmaids gave her a few ideas and she ran with it. They were amazing, exactly what we wanted!  Mud Duck Paper See the "Summer Showers" post for the invitations. I had quite some time to come up with an idea for this shower. I had pictures saved, a list of things I would need written down months in advance. About 2 weeks before the shower, I changed my mind. My original "safe" idea was just too boring for the beautiful bride to be. Instead I decided to take my idea from the seriously cute invitations and run with it. Of course I also had to make my infamous Salted Caramel Cupcakes, since they are the bride's favorite. Little did I know that the day of the shower people would be calling dibs on the cupcakes. I literally thought a fight might break out if there weren't enough. I guess I should have made a salted caramel cake as well. {next time} But alas, these lovely ladies kept their cool and no one was hurt in the eating of the cupcakes. The bride even got to take one home. So in honor of the lovely and beautiful bride to be, I made what I consider to be one of my best cakes ever. {albeit the wrong choice of the actual cake flavor} 

Fantastic Cake. Beautiful shower. Happy Happy Bride to Be. 

{my lovely and talented helper, Vanessa}

{The cake and matching invitation}

{LOVE}

{BRIDE}

It's never too late for Cherry Blossoms

I am going to start by *apologizing to my few followers...I have been seriously slacking lately. On a happy note I am finished with school FOREVER and am so happy to be able to spend my evenings and weekends doing things I love....instead of studying, writing papers, etc. So to kick off my {almost} new found freedom I decided to make a very special friend cupcakes for her 30th birthday. So I dusted off the ole mixer and put my thinking cap on trying to think of something new and different. Being that this birthday fell exactly 6 days before my final exam and I was super busy at work, I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to come up with a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious idea. I decided on a cherry blossom theme and went from there. Following this decision I didn't realize how long it would take to make my own gum paste. I should have known that in my haste this would turn out to be a terrible idea. I have learned to "improvise" when I bake sometimes and I later learned that when making gum paste from scratch, you have to be exact. Like really exact. So my gum paste, which for those of you who aren't familiar, should roll out almost like a dough....ended up more like just plain old gum. I added powdered sugar and a few other things that google came up with to make it work, but in the end it was a lost cause. I am not really one to give up...especially when I have perfectly edible cupcakes sitting next to me so I woke up early, ran to the store and got the pre-made gum paste. So.much.easier.

Next time I get a little overzealous I think I'll just eat all the cupcakes.