In which: the angel is in the details.
In which: damn you pinterest.
In which: buttercream for lunch.

So. We had a baby shower for a woman who works in Neel's lab this week, and for some ridiculous reason I offered to bring a cake. We've discussed this before, but I am not a baker. In these situations, you can do a couple of things (stop by a bakery being the first that comes to mind), and chose to pimp out a basic cake in the hopes that by making it look fabulous, you'd ignore its flaws.

Start here, with a super-easy cake recipe. If you're pressed for time or low on the skill set (cough cough) Dunkin Hines makes a nice cake mix. Trust me, no judgement here.

I knew I wanted a pink cake, so I thought I'd do a raspberry butter cream icing. So I bought some raspberries, thinking I'd puree them into the icing, but as I was baking, I thought it might be nice to have a raspberry filling in the cake. Found that recipe here.

I saved some of the raspberries from the puree and stirred them into a basic buttercream icing, so I'd be in the pink (Baby Girl!), and that recipe was here.

But the whole problem that started this was this gorgeous cake from Spoon Fork Bacon. Get a load of this. I may not be able to pull off a Rosewater Cake, but I might just be able to manage some raspberries coated in glitter. Everything tastes better with glitter.

Updated to add (because I think when I'm in the car and I had to drive Neel to work this morning): I think the point of this post is that you can take pretty much any cake you want and make it your own. Store bought, homemade, cake mix, whatevs. If you have a gluten-free cake recipe or mix that you like, go for it. This is where the angel is in the details. Also, I got the glitter at Michael's. I had pink and gold. I dumped the pink into the icing and it just barely gave it some extra shimmer. For the raspberries, I poured some of the gold glitter into a bowl and rolled the raspberries in the bowl. It helps if they're dry. I also need to say that the kitchen was a complete wreck when I was done, and Neel did the dishes! I'm a lucky woman.

So there you have it. Perfectly pink, perfectly sparkly to welcome a perfect little girl into the world. And the moral of the story is this: From a box or from a bowl, pimp your cake and let the good times roll.