A Lovely Bridal Shower (and Cake!)

My cousin's bridal shower was last weekend and I was one of the hostesses. I was not really relishing the idea of watching everyone else have dessert when I could not partake, so I talked with my mom and sister about baking the cake myself and making it GF. I also wanted to be sure that everyone would be happy with the result, so I did a test run earlier in the week for them to taste test. I had baked a wonderful lemon sour cream pound cake from the Four Chickens blog I follow, and I figured that would be a winner. (Actually, I had a couple of other ideas from that blog that were various chocolate cake options, but mom and Michelle voted lemon for the shower.)

Anyway, the test run was a hit -- it even resulted in my 12-year-old asking for this lemon cake for his next birthday, so you know it had to be pretty good! So I baked it again on Friday night for the Saturday shower. Mom had requested that I make the glaze a little more yellow so it was obvious it was going to be lemon flavored before you bit into it, so I used a tiny bit of a Wilton lemon yellow dye to adjust that. Michelle brought raspberries to add a splash of contrasting color to the cake and this was the result (no flash so the yellow of the glaze is not obvious in this picture, but rest assured, it's a beautiful shade of lemon yellow):


I think it turned out very pretty and very tasty, and the bride-to-be was happy as well! Everyone seemed to enjoy it so I'll count that as a success. The only other thing I'd like to figure out is how to make the glaze stay shiny after it dries. It was a much more vibrant yellow while it was pouring on wet than it was when it dried. Guess I'll have to Google info on that!

(Now, if only I had remembered to grab the gift for the bride from my dining room before I left town to drive to Houston for the shower, everything would have been perfect! But let's dwell on the positive, shall we?)