Cute Cakes : First Birthday and Baby Shower

Good evening, everyone! As I patiently await the results of the Threadcakes competition, I am here to share a couple of cute cakes I've made in the past week! One of them is a monkey-themed first birthday cake.

It was a huge 12" vanilla cake with a little vanilla cupcake as the "smash cake." The design was based on the serveware for the party.

The cake was a success, and the little guy loved it!

My second cake was for a baby shower for a baby boy. I was to construct a 3-tier cake that matched the invitation.

I added some icing booties and little fondant rubber duckies

Some parts of the invitation had glitter accents, so I thought it would be fun to add some clear disco dust (love that stuff!)

I must say that I am very proud of this one. I think that I am getting much, much better at my stacked cakes, which will come in handy when I make my huge cake masterpieces in the future. :)

And I have one more cake to make this week: my own birthday cake! Yes, my 26th birthday is tomorrow! My good friend Jessica (who turned 25 this past Monday) and I are celebrating Saturday with a joint birthday party! I'm still not quite sure what to do design-wise, but I'll try to think of something awesome! :)

Stuffed Animal Baby Shower Cake

Hello, again! I've finally had a chance to relax this weekend after much running around! I went to a friend's welcome-home gathering, I threw my first Pampered Chef party, and I went to a special little guy's second birthday party. There was a birthday cake and some sweet treats made, so I'll definitely get to that soon!

But first, I wanted to post about a baby shower cake I recently made. It was meant for an old coworker and a good friend of mine who was having her fourth baby! I decided I could design the cake after the invitation, since it had both pink and blue in it.

 I started with an 8" vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream tinted yellow. On top, I put the stuffed lion on a green background.

Then I placed the bunny and the bear on the sides (because they couldn't fit on the top!)

And to fill up the space on the rest of the cake, I added some cute little buttons on the side with some dots. I think they worked out nicely!

After I added the borders, the cake was almost complete! I had to refrigerate the cake for about half an hour in order for the buttercream to set. Then I took my fondant tool (it snuck into the first photo up there) and made holes in the buttons as well as little "stitches" on the stuffed animals.

Aaaand here it is all together!

My friend loved the cake as did all of the ladies at the baby shower. They wanted me to "do the honors" of cutting it, but I just couldn't! (I'm working on finding the strength to cut my own cakes!)

The baby shower was a surprise, so it was nice to see the look on her face when she saw all of the baby shower decorations and gifts! It was also nice to reconnect with the other ladies who I also worked with. Unfortunately, the conversation quickly turned into delivery room horror stories, which had me reconsidering having children someday. Yech!

My First Baby Shower Cake!

I've been making cakes for a few years, but to cut down on waste, I only make what I need. So that means I haven't had the opportunity to make a baby shower cake-- until now! My friend gave me creative license. The only qualm was to minimize the fondant (totally understandable since not many people are fond of it mwaha). So I started by baking a white cake then icing and filling it with delicious butter-almond buttercream. Then I got to work on making baby blocks out of rice cereal treats. I could've made it, but I didn't want to be tempted to eat the surplus (yum!) so I bought the premade squares.

I cut them down to the same size...

Then I covered them in buttercream (except for one side) and covered that with fondant...

Then I added baby blue and light green accents to the blocks...

I had that extra one back there in case I needed it.

Then lastly, some buttercream letters and accents (I added a baby bottle and a rattle).

As for the actual cake, I simply decorated it with a shell border and blue ruffle and two pairs of baby blue buttercream booties (whoa, say that five times fast) and voila!

My friend loved it, so I guess my first baby shower cake was a success!


Next cake: I think I'll be getting back into gumpaste... Stay tuned!