Pre-Wedding Planning Party

Hobbies are relaxing to most people, reading, fly fishing, hiking...but not the Blondes. Our hobby is spending months in a state of anxiety while planning weddings. We've done it four times now, and are about to do it again. Typically, we tend to have friends who are really cheap and they know we are suckers for any type of big party where we get to do the cooking, so we end up cooking for a lot of big parties... Anyway, one of our nieces is getting married and we volunteered to do the food, so we decided to have a planning party. In an effort to impress the parents of the bride with our baking skills, we decided to bake a cake. We aren't going to do the wedding cake (we aren't that ambitious yet), but with the idea that it could be used as centerpieces on the tables. Here's how we did it:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients:

3 eggs

2/3 cup oil

1 cup water

1 8 oz. jar lemon curd

large package of lemon instant pudding

1 boxed yellow cake mix

Beat the above ingredients until well blended

Pour batter into buttered/floured bundt cake pan and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean...

After the cake cools, glaze it with a glaze made of the following mixed together:

2 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup orange juice

couple of drops of yellow and red food color to make the glaze kind of orangey.

Then place your favorite flowers or whatever flowers work for your event on top and stuck down in the hole. You can adjust the color of the glaze to contrast with the color of the flowers by using different food coloring. Here's what ours looked like: