Tea Party.

Matt's sister just got married on the 6th of July, but back in June, I offered to throw a bridal shower for her at our house.  We decided to go fairly simple and just have it be a tea/coffee type deal, so I decided our theme would be a tea party.  I made 4 types of tea sandwiches to go with our coffee and tea, and then decided to also make a cake, of course!  I've been reading this blog lately: http://sweetapolita.com/.  She has tons of fabulous sounding cakes and excellent directions on cake assembly and mixing instructions.  She has a recipe on there for a whipped vanilla frosting, that even has mixing times and speeds for a kitchen aid mixer - which I love - it's essentially fool proof!

So anyways, on her blog she has a recipe for a Vanilla Blackberry Mascarpone cake.  It sounded AMAZING, and she also has a great video tutorial on how do to an 'ombre' type swirl frosting...which I thought sounded fun, so I went for it.

What you can't really see in the pic is that it was supposed to go purple, white, yellow - but the yellow kinda smeared into the white...no big deal.  I have to say this cake was DELICIOUS.  In fact, I normally just use boxed cakes for my cakes and they turn out fine...but this one was very good.  The frosting was so creamy and almost light, which made it very easy to work with.  It also seemed like it didn't crust as quickly as my normal butter cream recipe, which I also LOVED, since there was ample time to go back and fiddle however I needed to.  I think that's a definite MUST for Colorado, with it being SO dry here.  I will definitely be using this recipe again.  I wish I would have taken a pic of the insides, because the blackberry compote was so beautiful!  Yum.