Baby Shower Cake

There are two types of cake designs that I struggle to come up with. One is a generic guy's birthday cake and the other is a generic baby shower cake. For a lady's birthday cake you can always do flowers. Even if you don't know anything about her, you can do flowers and it will look beautiful and appropriate. Kids' birthday cakes? There are endless options. Bridal shower? The ideas are endless! But give me a guy's birthday cake and I'm stumped. Unless he likes hunting or fishing or sports I usually struggle to come up with a fun cake idea. Usually they and up looking something like this "present" cake. There is nothing wrong with it. But it really isn't anything special!

Then there are baby shower cakes. There are tons of great cake ideas out there. Just check out the Baby Shower gallery on Cake Central. You could be stuck there for days. Literally. At the time of this post they have 64,000+ pictures of baby shower cakes. And that number grows every day! The problem comes with trying to make a gender neutral cake! There is only so much you can do with yellow and green! Yes, I know there are plenty of other colors you can use that are also neutral, but then you start running the risk of it being too modern or to girly or too boyish. You could always go with an animal theme. There are tons of beautiful owl cakes, duck cakes, monkey cakes and jungle animal cakes. But if you don't know the mother that well, it's hard to know if she's really into the whole owl craze!

So, I'm still trying to come up with a baby shower design that is generic enough to fit any baby shower yet fun enough to have the "WOW!" factor. If you have any ideas, please let me know! For know, this is my generic cake. (Yes, I know, this one is boyish. But the design can easily transfer to girl or neutral to fit the celebration.)

An Elegant Rosette Cake in no time at all!

I volunteered to make a birthday cake for an impromptu birthday party last weekend. The cake needed to serve 20 to 25 people so I thought I would make a single layer half-sheet cake. I reached into my cake pan rack and came out with a 14" square cake pan instead. They serve about the same amount of people, so I figured I would just roll with that. 

Plus, in my mind anyway, a square cake somehow seems to be more personal. It's probably because a sheet cake has the "grocery store" feel. As in "Sorry Grandma, we forgot it was your birthday until we were on our way over, so we stopped at the grocery store to pick up this cake." Now don't get me wrong, a grocery store cake beats having no cake at all, because you know what they say, "A party without a cake is just a meeting."

Anyway, so back to this cake I was making. I made it half chocolate half white almond. As soon as I had the cake in the oven, I started whipping up a large batch of frosting. A cake need to be completely cooled before it is frosted, otherwise you risk the frosting melting and sliding off the cake. 

I knew the cake wouldn't be cool enough to frost before we left home (the party was at Grandma's house!)so I started putting together a a box of decorating supplies. I stilled didn't have an ideas in mind, but I thought maybe I would come up with some inspiration along the way. I took along some frosting bags and an assortment of tips. I also through in some sprinkles, some fondant and some food coloring.

When it was time to decorate the cake, I only had about 15 minutes to do it, so I got started and hoped that I would be inspired along the way. The first thing I did was completely frost the cake. There is nothing like a blank canvas, or in this cake a nicely frosted white cake, to give an artist some inspiration! 

I figured that I would start with a border and then I could write "Happy Birthday!" add some pretty sprinkles, and call it a day. I filled a large frosting bag and added a 1M tip to it. I took a deep breath, and then the inspiration hit!

I've been seeing all these beautiful cakes covered completely in frosting rosettes. I have been wanting to make on of these for a while. So I thought that I would make the border out of these rosettes. I figured that this would add an elegant touch to the cake. I liked the look so much that I decided to cover all the sides of the cakes with the rosettes. Well it turns out that this is a very fast way to decorate a cake! 

It uses a ton of frosting but not a lot of time! There was still a good amount of frosting left so I decided to add another round of rosettes on the top of the cake. At this point it was very questionable if I would have enough frosting left to cover the whole cake with rosettes, but I figured I would go for it. I'm glad that I did, because I love the way it turned out! Beautiful! Elegant! (and very fast, but nobody else needs to know that!)

The best part about this design is that it could be used for so many occasions. Birthdays, showers, weddings, you name the occasion, this cake is probably appropriate!

To make this cake you will need:

A plain frosted cake

Tons of frosting! (When you think you have enough, you better make one more batch!)

Large frosting bag

Large coupler

1M tip

A spoon or spatula to scoop the frosting into the bag.

Start by using the coupler to attach the 1M tip to the bag. Then fill your bag with frosting. Starting at the bottom of the cake, make rows of rosettes until you have completely covered one row. Now move up and repeat! To make a rosette, make a large circle (however big you want each rosette to be) then continue circling inward (only slightly overlapping the frosting) until you have completely filled in the rosette. It is the same motion that is used to frost a cupcake using this tip.

Enjoy your cake! Now you have a fast, elegant cake design to make next time you are in a hurry!

Take me out to the ball game. A Glove, Bat and Baseball cake.

Spring is just around the corner. That is what the calendar says. With 33 inches of snow left on the ground, I have a hard time believing it! But the longer days and sunshine give me hope that it might be true. To get us into the spring spirit I thought I would feature a baseball cake that I made for my niece. Because nothing says spring is here like the start of baseball season.

To recreate this cake you will need a half sheet cake (single layer), Rice Krispy Treats (homemade or store bought), buttercream frosting, fondant, icing coloring (brown, green and black), brown sugar, and cake boards (2 half sheet size or one full sheet size). On this cake, The home plate and pitchers mound are cake and the glove, baseball and bat are made out of Rice Krispy Treats covered with fondant.

Let's start with the home plate and pitchers mound. These will be carved out of a single layer half sheet cake. First cut the pitchers mound out of the cake by making a simple cut across the full length of the short side of the cake (refer to the diagram). Then to make the home plate, cut triangles out of the bottom corners of the remaining cake (refer to diagram). These triangles are "extra". (This would be a good opportunity to sample the cake!) Now you have a pitching mound and home plate. Next you will need to prepare your cake board. Spread a thin layer of frosting over the entire cake board using light brown frosting. Next sprinkle a layer of brown sugar over the frosting. This gives it a more realistic appearance of dirt. Place your cakes on the cake board and frost with white frosting.

Now prep your second cake board. On this one, spread a thin layer of green frosting. To add some texture, I swirled green frosting using a #5 tips. However you could use the grass tip or dye some coconut green and cover the board with that. Now you are going to use your Rice Krispy Treats to form a Ball, Glove and Bat. After forming the shapes, cover them with a thin layer of frosting. For the bat I covered it in tan frosting. But if you prefer you could cover it with fondant. the ball is covered in white frosting with black frosting used with a #2 tip for the details. The glove is covered in brown fondant. The detailing of the glove is also done with brown fondant. I used my "real" baseball glove for inspiration on the details.