"The Cake"

Back in September, I hosted a Bridal Shower for one of my Best Friends, Shannon.  If you're a regular reader of my blog, you'll recognize Shannon from many of my travel posts (most prominent on the blog are our trips to Honduras & Europe both in 2009, but we've also been a ton of other fun places over the years - whether roadtrips or planetrips - that I have not blogged about). 

I have actually known Shannon since our Youth Group days at church - long, long ago!  She was also the friend that I lived with for a while after I sold my first house.  She and I have had similar life paths.  It's been really neat to see how the Lord has intertwined out lives so that we each have someone to lean on and understand each other, but also so that we could experience a lot of the same things together....and have a lot of fun traveling and seeing all kinds of places along the way.  She and I bought our first houses a week apart back in 2004, have changed jobs around the same time (more than once) and have had many other similar experiences where we both seem to go through almost the exact same thing at the same time!  It's been fun and meaningful and a joy to have her as a Best Friend.

Shannon got engaged back in July - here's a picture of her with her Honey, Michael, on the day she said "Yes."

Anywho, for her bridal shower, I decided to try my hand at baking a cake and then decorating it all by myself! I have a Wilton template thing that makes a checkerboard cake and so I wanted to try it out.  (Can I just say...what was I thinking?).  Hopefully I made one of my other Best Friends (and old college roomie), Alisha, proud since she is now a Cake Baker and Pastry Chef by trade (check out her website here.)

I digress....on to the cake!

I started with a regular boxed white cake mix...

...followed the directions on the box...

And once the cake was mixed according to the directions, I added some edible dye.

Once I began mixing, I could see what the color would be and added more dye as necessary to achieve the color I was going for.  (I had a purple and pink theme going on for the shower decorations and wanted the cake to match).

I made three separate cake mixes, all with different color batter.

Then I used my handy, dandy bullseye-looking template to pour the colored cake batter into the pan.

I made 4 different colored cakes (I knew I needed at least 3 cakes to get the checkerboard results, but I went ahead and made 4 cakes just in case).

Here's what they looked like after baking them according to the box guidelines:

Then I cut off the tops to make them straight and level for stacking....and then I set the cakes aside.

Time to make the icing!  I found a butter cream icing recipe online and followed the directions.

Again,  added edible dye to the icing....

....and got some pretty purples and pinks!

Next, I iced the top of the first layer....

....then added the other two layers - making sure to alternate cake colors to achieve the checkerboard look when it was cut.

Then I used icing and crumb-coated the entire cake.

My Mom stopped by and made sure that the icing was good enough to serve to others.  I might have helped her in this taste-testing.  What can I say?  Like Mother, Like Daughter!

Okay, so as I started actually decorating the cake, I forgot to take many step by step pictures.....but here's the finished bottom half of the cake.  I just started adding random whimsical stripes and dots using different icing tips until the entire cake was covered.

Then the top of the cake was a smaller two-layer strawberry cake with cream cheese icing. (Please excuse the multiple paint samples I have around the kitchen - I am seriously turning into my mother!!).  :)

I decorated the top half of the cake with purple polka-dots to add just a little more whimsy.

I then carried each cake separately into the Great Room (where the shower would be held) and stacked them.

I added a bead of purple polka-dots to fill the space between the cakes....

....and voila! One rather lop-sided, pink/purple/magenta, hopefully edible and hopefully checker-boarded- on-the- inside shower cake!

That's me serving the cake - which everyone actually ooh'd and aah'd over during the shower - more about the look than the taste I think, but I'll take it as a success!

Here's a close-up of the interior purple and pink checkerboard - pretty cool huh?

Since this shower cake took several more hours of blood, sweat, & tears, lack of sleep and loss of sanity, than I had anticipated (although I have to say that Shannon is totally worth it!)......it will forevermore be known simply as "The Cake" - and everyone, everywhere will know exactly which cake I am referring to.

Here's all the girls at Shannon's shower!  We had a blast and Shannon got lots of nice gifts!