A Lovely Bridal Shower for Kathy

It seems like everybody around me is getting married now and I feel so happy for them!
This bridal shower happened almost three weeks ago (yeah, I know it was a long time ago and pardon me for my lack of post lately :( ). It was a week after Yossi's bridal shower, but I didn't need to make a dessert table for it, and also it was on Sunday which made it a lot better because that means that I have the whole Saturday (or almost) to work on it, yay! This cake was pretty straight forward and not as stressful as the dessert table (don't get me wrong, I totally enjoyed making it) since Kathy, the bride-to-be, has decided from the very beginning what kind of cake she wanted, which is Indonesian cheese cake with vanilla and pandan sponge alternating between layers. It's the same cake that I made for her sister, Vicky's wedding cake a while ago. Deciding what type of cake has always been the hardest part for me, so I was so relieved that she knew what she wanted, and an easy one at that too!

Decoration is the second hardest thing after the type of cake itself, but this time, it wasn't as difficult. There was no theme or anything, the invitation mentioned to wear something pretty a.k.a dress, colorful one if possible to match Kathy's cheerful personality. I immediately thought of pink and brown cake. I have been wanting to make a cake with these two color combo for the longest time. I had seen a lot of cake with these two colors and I totally fall in love with it, but so far, I had never get any opportunity or the perfect occasion for it. The color is modern, but still has femininity and girlishness to it. It also gives a cheerful and playful feeling, which I think totally matches Kathy's personality (she LOVES Disney too :D). So the cake and the color are set, next, I need to come up with the design.

After a few days of trying to find inspiration here and there, I decided to make something similar to this .http://carriescakes.com/cakes/399.jpg. This site has been my inspiration and it has a lot of gorgeous designs that I can only dreamt of making. Everything in their side is perfection. They have a pink and brown cake design that I really like. It is simple, clean, and yet so elegant. I have seen similar cake out there with similar design as well. Since Kathy's cake would be 9" and 6" tiered cake only (instead of 4-tiered cake), I need to think how to incorporate the color and the design without making it looking too busy or too plain, and here's what I came up with.

It was my first time using chocolate fondant (it is chocolate-flavored fondant and not just brown-colored fondant). I want to thank Hany SO MUCH for giving me this chocolate fondant for this cake. She even gave me more thatn what I needed! I couldn't imagine how many bottles of coloring I will need if I were to color it myself and it wouldn't be as good either. I would imagine the texture will be too soft due to the amount of the coloring. She has been a HUGE help in helping me out with almond powder (for Yossi's shower) and this chocolate fondant, not to mention the other tips she has. I learned that it's a bit harder to work with dark-colored fondant because the white from confectioners' sugar that doesn't dissolve, will really show in the finished products, making it look dirty. It is not so much of a problem before because I always used pastel color and it wasn't so obvious. I wish I could make the ribbon a lot thinner and a lot more neat, but overall, I think it's acceptable :). I brushed the ribbon with pink pearl dust to give it that shiny look, but I guess it wasn't really showing no matter how much dust I applied. oh well....

I also made a strawberry panna cotta dessert for this shower. It is the same idea as the mango panna cotta for Yossi's shower, but made with strawberries (the idea came from Cannelle-vanille). I was thinking that a light fruity dessert would fit really well since there will be other desserts that were more filling. This time, I didn't use that wine glasses to assemble my dessert (I have learned my lesson) and instead uses this mini 5.5oz tumblers. This is the smallest size I could find, even though I opted for something smaller, maybe 4 oz, but no luck. I was just glad the I found these because I didn't when I was looking for it for Yossi's shower.

It turned out that the cake and the dessert fitted really well with the decoration. There were red roses in a bucket, pink tablecloth, red plates and napkins, even the drink is pink! So the cake and the dessert have the perfect color to match! There were some Indonesian savory snacks too made by Yeye that were really yummy and everything was really sweet and nice. We only cut the bottom 9" tier for the guest to enjoy after the event, and Kathy took home the top 6" tier ( she later informed me that she and Vicky, her sister, finished the cake in one day!!).

In the end, I was so glad that everything was going great and congratulations again to Richard and Kathy! Wish you both all the happiness and great life together.