Baby Showers should be all about the Mom~To~Be

I wish wish wish wish I could find the napkin that this image was copied off of!! My friend suggested me to her friend and asked if I could do a baby shower cake. Red Velvet. Red Velvet is one of those mystery cakes to me. What is the draw? It isn't Chocolate cake exactly because there are about 3 TBS of cocoa in it..........but it certainly isn't a Yellow or a White cake because there are about 3 TBS of cocoa in it. Yet is vaguely tastes like both. My family didn't have Red Velvet hanging around our house. We had White Cake White Icing. That was it mostly - and Chocolate Brownies...........and tons of cookies at the holidays. My mom would bake a MILLION different kinds of cookies. For almost a month she was baking them. Then we would make huge trays of cookies to give to folks and to have around for holiday gatherings. But after that we had Carrot cake and my favorite as a kid German Chocolate Cake (loved the coconut).

What were we talking about?? Oh, the Red Velvet. So Red Velvet. Don't exactly get it. I will however admit that it is kinda yummy - and definately pretty.

So anyway...........this friend of a friend asked me to copy the party napkin she had. This is just a cute cake if you can't see the napkin. It was fun to make. I never heard back from her when I asked how it went...........so hopefully they thought it was as cute as I did - and my friend, Pennie, who I was with when I brought it by the hostesses house on our way to Sam's..........which is a whole other topic.

The cake was Red Velvet (obviously) with a Vanilla Buttercream icing. Now - speaking of Red Velvet and icing. Again - didn't grow up with this cake, but there seems to be A LOT of different trains of thought on what icing goes with the cake. Some say a basic buttercream - some have said a cream cheese - and still others have mentioned a special icing that you cook in a simmer pot on the stove top. If you are a Red Velvet Cake Specialist would you please weigh in and let me know what icing you have experienced on this cake?

Sports Theme Baby Shower Cake

Here is a fun little easy buttercream iced cake that was set for a baby shower party at our elementary school for one of our teaching assistants. Not too long back I was asked by my sister in law to do something in a sports theme for her sister for a baby shower and I started searching Sports Theme'd Baby Showers. A cake popped up that had a border of various balls used for sports and I filed that away in my head.

Then when my friend, Tim, husband of Catherine, asked me if I would make the cake for the teacher and that it was going to be a baby boy and they would do sports.........I already had my idea.

I took some fondant and shaped some easy baseballs, footballs and golf balls. You can't see it, but the golf balls have a texture to them. Supposedly making them more golf ball like.

Then I drew a bunch of green and blue lines - AS YOU CAN CLEARLY SEE. Cute & Easy!!

This cake was half Chocolate and half Butter. Iced in a Vanilla buttercream and just a touch of vanilla fondant for deco.

Bronwen & Ron's Pea Pods

I know that you have seen a similar picture before..........in the 2 Turkey's post. I did a few cakes and cupcakes that week, but I never got around to finishing the posts for them.

This particular round of cake was for my little sisters baby shower. I used all those little sage colored balls and the fleshy/pink colored balls for the fondant pea pods that I created. In all I rolled 140 flesh balls and 280 sage balls.

















Then I cut out a circle in more sage fondant.......stretched it just a bit (sorry pictures are hard to remember to take when you are in the "doing" of things)........placed 3 peas into the center of each circle and then closed the circle up and pinched the ends......

Tah Dah...........a pea pod is born!
















This is the finished product. The pea pods traveled with me to St. Louis for the party.........that is where all our family lives......and I drew little eyes and mouths on each flesh pod. So they look like little babies - the traditional "pea in the pod" thought.

Easily I popped one pea pod on top of each cupcake. This made serving at the baby shower so much easier. No plates, no Forks, hardly even a napkin!

















We just set a table up with various leveled serving dishes........filled the table with the cupcakes and Voila!! Easy Dessert Service.

These cupcakes were half Pumpkin with Cinnamon Buttercream icing and half Chocolate Chocolate Chip with Vanilla Buttercream icing..........and all had a Vanilla Buttercream Fondant Pea pod topper. Fun!!

Baby Shower Surprise

Cupcakes are very wanted these days - guess is it the no fuss no mess thing they bring. You can skip plates, forks and only use a napkin for cupcakes. But sometimes the center icing melded into cake part of a cake is the BEST part - so fillings are becoming popular. Often people ask me if I have a giant syringe that I put the filling in with............nope..........I use this.........a candy thermometer sheath and a sharp stick - usually a skewer.

I take a bunch of perfect cupcakes and poke the plastic tube in, twist and pull out the cake. Then use the skewer to make the cake drop out. I get a bunch of cupcakes with holes. Then I fill the holes up.

Cover the top with some fondant and the person biting into them never knows about the surprise........until the hit it. Everyone loves a surprise right?

Now this particular set of cakes was going to a baby shower. And the mom to be had a cute idea of how to surprise the guests in telling them the sex of the baby. Only when she went to her doctors appointment the baby turned on them and hide the surprise of what he/she was. When she called to tell me that she sounded so sad and I felt kinda bad...........so I whipped up some fondant baby bottles to put on top of the cakes. Nothing overly creative - I only had 20 minutes to make 24 bottles. So they are mildly basic - but you get the idea.

So here was what the final product looked like - I didn't put the bottles on because I didn't ask her if I could. Instead I brought the bottles and gifted them to her and let her decide.

Normal cupcake right?

Surprise!!!! It's a boy cupcake!! (Yes I know stereotypes stereotypes)...........

I kept one cupcake back to taste and put a baby bottle on this one for my own use. So - again - normal cupcake.........

Surprise!!! It's a Girl!!!!

Too bad it didn't work out for her - this would have been a super cute thing to do. I hear now that it is very popular.

There were 24 cupcakes. Half were Milk Chocolate with a Chocolate Buttercream icing - the other 12 were White Silk cake with a Vanilla Buttercream icing. The filling on all of them was a Cream Cheese Marshmallow...........tasted a smidge more delicious then the center of a Hostess Cupcake.

Swinging with Banana's

Monkeys are always fun! This cake was based on a Baby's Room Bed Set. The Mom To Be's sister asked me to match the set they were using for the baby. Easy enough. Wish I had a picture of the set so you could see how easy it was to copy.


The cake was Marble.........although come on now - everyone knows this cake should have been a BANANA cake!! This angle shows more specifically how the banana's were raised up off of the cake to give it a slight 3D effect.


The Monkey Baby is holding a slightly peeled banana. This is basically the beginning of the sculpting that I have learned to do with fondant. And the first time ever that I thought ........... "hmmmm....I can probably paint this with food coloring right? That is edible." Duh!!


So this was a lot of fun and a first to learning a few new things that I could use on future cakes. Again - it was a Marble cake - the icing is Vanilla Buttercream (another usual favorite).

Pooh Bear Baby Cake