Kristi's Baby Shower Cake

When I first found out that my friend Erin's sister was pregnant I said, "I'll make her baby shower cake!"  So this cake was a long time coming!  

Kristi's theme for the shower was absolutely adorable.  Her invites were rustic chic and she was going for a pink and gray theme.  I'm not doing it justice by explaining it.  It was so elegant and cute! Mason jars filled with baby's breath.  I mean, come on!!

Kristi was very clear that I could do whatever I wanted with the cake.  Of course I wanted her to like it and I know that she is a fan of white cake with vanilla frosting.  Her sister Erin said that nothing compares to Swiss Meringue Buttercream, so I opted for that.  The top and bottom tier were white cake and the middle tier was my favorite - chocolate!

I made the little booties on top out of gum paste.

Here's the cake at it's destination.  It looked perfectly "dressed" for the occasion!

Here's Kristi, the beautiful mother-to-be!  

Chocolate cake --- YUM!!!!

And to keep the festive flow, I added some pink sprinkles in the cake batter.  All of the frosting and filling was Swiss Meringue Buttercream.  

The day was absolutely perfect and Kristi's baby girl was welcomed so lovingly by all of Kristi's family and friends.  It was such a beautiful party!  We're so excited to meet your daughter!

Baby McDonald

My sister-in-law's niece and her husband are expecting their first child this Fall.  I couldn't be more happy for this special couple.  So, when my SIL requested a Cake Mama cake for the shower, I was happy to hop out of retirement to make it happen.  ;)  

The theme of the shower was woodland animals and the invitation was as cute as can be with a little raccoon and a fox under a few birch trees.  So, I tried to recreate the invite in cake form, and here's how it turned out.

The cake is a chocolate-flecked cake with buttercream filling and frosting.  Delish!

I wish Baby McDonald the best life can offer!  He.will.be.loved.  

It's a Girl!

I have made this cake before; many, many times, but never was it a girl!  This was a fun one to make again and I'm so happy I got to make the pink diaper.  ;)  

Debra requested this cake for her coworker's baby shower.  

Both cakes are white cake with a creamy buttercream filling and topped and decorated with fondant. Lots of it.  

Many blessings to the mom-to-be!  I hope the rest of her pregnancy is comfortable and quick!  

Coming Soon... A Baby Shower Cake

Nancy requested a baby shower cake a few months back.  She wanted something original, envisioned a two-tiered cake, and wanted something for a baby boy.  Here's the sketch she gave me.  

The color scheme came together once she discovered what the mom-to-be wanted and I think this little baby boy shower cake turned out really cute.  

The bottom tier is my chocolate cake with homemade chocolate mousse filling.  The top tier is vanilla cake with raspberry preserve filling.  Everything is frosted with a creamy buttercream frosting and I used either gum paste or fondant (or a combination of both) to make the decorations. 

I hope that the mom-to-be had a beautiful baby shower!  I wish her well!  

Baby Shower Cake for Boy or Girl

Melissa is one of my fabulous students who won a Cake Mama gift at my birthday giveaway last year. She opted to use her gift for a baby shower she was hosting.  How very nice of her to share!!!

Melissa ordered a 6" and 8" tiered cake and she wanted each cake to have chocolate and vanilla layers.  So here's what each of the cakes looks like on the inside.  Chocolate on the bottom and vanilla on top, so everyone gets a smidge of both flavors.  Yummy!!

I used my fabulous boiled icing recipe for this cake.  It's super creamy and whipped with oodles of vanilla.  It's truly divine.  She was decorating for the shower using chevron and wanted that to be reflected in the cake.  So different shades of blue and pink chevron were placed on the cake.  

I think this one turned out so cute!  What a happy cake!!

Baby Cakes

I've done this cake before.  But not for Christine, a wonderful gal I went to high school with.  I was SUPER excited to help her out with a baby shower she was helping to plan at her work.  The mother-to-be requested a confetti cake and that's what both of these were.  Confetti cake with vanilla buttercream filling.

I wish I meant to do it, but I love how the cake round under the head looks like a baby bonnet.  A happy accident!

I hope that the baby shower was a success!  Thanks, Christine, for thinking of me for your event!

Animal-tastic Baby Shower Cake

So, after seeing some of my cakes on some of her friends' Facebook pages, Kari figured she MUST know me.  We have mutual friends afterall!  Turns out we went to high school together and it was a BLAST to see her again!  She requested a baby shower cake to go with the invitation that looked like this:

And here's the cake I made for the celebration.  It is my FAVORITE flavor combination.  Chocolate cake with buttercream, chocolate fudge and Oreo cookies in the middle.  Oh.My.Gosh.  It is divine!  

I hope the shower was super fun!  Thanks so much, Kari, for thinking of me!  It was wonderful to see you again!

A Shower Cake

My friend Lori emailed me a few weeks back requesting a cake for a baby shower she was co-hosting for her sister-in-law.  She came across a really cute design online and forwarded the picture to me.  My goal was to recreate it as closely as possible.  I think it's a really cute cake and has lots of fun colors.  This cake took me way longer than I thought it would - and I knew it would be time-consuming.  First of all, coloring fondant takes time and there were a lot of colors on this cake.  But the flowers with the tiny dots around the center took the most time.  There was one of those for every color.  Decorating alone took me 4 1/2 hours.  Add in baking time and this was a whole day's work!  (But I do so love it!)

Her sister-in-law doesn't know if she's having a boy or a girl and that is why this cake was perfect!  I really liked how it turned out.

Both tiers were marble cakes with raspberry buttercream filling.  The outside is decorated with vanilla buttercream and fondant details. 

Thanks again, Lori!  I love making cakes for you!

Cute as a Baby!

What fun to do this cake again! My client contacted me requesting a baby shower cake for his wife. He requested a moist marble cake with chocolate mousse filling. Yup! I can DO that!

The only issue that I had was (and remember, I'm a from-scratch baker) finding a mousse recipe that DIDN'T have raw eggs in it. I came across Alton Brown's recipe which uses unflavored gelatin as a substitute. I wanted the mom-to-be to be able to enjoy her cake, right?! Anyway, I think the mousse turned out great (I also skipped the alcohol), and paired with the marble cake, it was a delicious combination.

Congrats to the new parents-to-be!!!

Welcome Maggie

This mommy-to-be registered for bedding from Pottery Barn. The bedding is called the "Haley collection" and it is absolutely adorable. Kristie, who requested the cake for the shower, thought it would be pretty cool if I could incorporate the bedding into the design of the cake somehow.

Isn't this totally cute???

So here's what I made:

The cake was marble with chocolate ganache filling and vanilla buttercream frosting. I wish the mommy-to-be a heartfelt congrats as you welcome little Maggie.

Baby Block Shower Cake

Trudy asked me to do a cake for her daughter's baby shower and she forwarded this link to me from Martha Stewart:

http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.3a0656639de62ad593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=6799d0f19132f010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=default

I thought the idea was absolutely adorable and was looking forward to getting started. I had some challenges, though, with this one. Martha wanted me to start out with a 12X18 sheet cake. After it bakes, I was to cut the cake in half and place one half over the other in order to make a two-layer cake. Then, I was to cut the cake into twelve, 3X3 inch pieces. None of this was challenging, but when I started working with these mini-cakes, the difficulty level raised dramatically. Frosting each with buttercream was sloppy and covering them in fondant was a whole different world to me. I'm used to working with cakes at least twice that size.

After a few hours (yes, it took more than one) I had each of the cakes covered in fondant and was working on decorating them. If you see from the picture from the website, Martha only shows 9 mini-cakes. The sides of the inside cakes weren't decorated, but everything on the outside was. I had to come up with at least 24 different designs on the sides and top and THAT was actually hard. I kept asking my husband, "What else can I put on a block?" He'd say, "A duck." Got it. "A boat." Got it. "A boot." Ooh! A BOOT!! Didn't have that one. But finally, I got them all decorated and the overall effect was really quite cute.

Trudy requested a white cake with strawberry buttercream. Her daughter is having a girl, and the pink filling was in honor of her soon-to-arrive granddaughter. The plan was to cut each of the mini-cakes in half, providing 24 servings. Nice.

I hope the shower was lovely! And congrats to Trudy and her daughter on the new addition to their family. How exciting!