Saturday I had the great pleasure of helping throw a baby shower for my sister-in-law who is pregnant and due June 10th.  When we talked about who would do what for the shower I volunteered to do the cake, since in my book practice makes perfect.  I hadn’t done a baby shower cake before and couldn’t wait to start coming up with the design.  My sister-in-law loves the color purple so I thought sage green would be a great color combo. I love looking at other people’s cakes for inspiration at Cake Central, which if you haven’t checked out is a treasure trove of wonderful delights.  I had seen many baby shower cakes done with fun silhouettes of pregnant ladies on it and decided to try one out myself.  I found this sketch of a pregnant lady on Cake Central and decided to go with it.  I was extremely lucky to have my friend Erica O’Brien, from Erica O’Brien Cake Design, come over and help me with it and overall we were pretty happy with how it turned out.  The credit for how well the silhouette turned out definitely goes to Erica…she meticulously cut the design out with an exacto knife and I thought it turned out great!  I decided to also try another new idea with this cake and did the middle tier almost double the size of the bottom and top tiers.  This look again comes from April Reed, who’s cakes are often not your traditional size and shape and in my opinion are very fun and interesting to look at. This cake design was quite tricky and especially hard to travel with.  I assembled the whole cake and then drove it to the place, which was very stressful and scary at times.  Next time I am assembling this style of cake on site for sure. The cake did make it there all in one piece and was a fun addition to a great shower.  I was also very happy to get so many compliments on the taste of the cake too, which in my opinion is the most important part.  No matter how beautiful a cake is, if it doesn’t take as good as it looks then it is a failure in my opinion.  The bottom cake was a Sweet Almond Cake with Lemon Cream and fresh Raspberries and a Lemon Mascarpone Frosting, which was a recipe from Sweet Melissa’s Baking Book that I tried for the first time with great success.  I used my own recipe for lemon cream, and I added the raspberries since I love fresh fruit in cakes.  The almond cake was to die for and I highly recommend trying it yourself.  The top two tiers were Banana Buttermilk Cake with Peanut Butter Filling and Milk Chocolate Ganache Frosting.  I think that it is really fun for your guests to have a choice between two different types of cakes since some people like light fruity cakes and others tend to like a richer cake with some chocolate in it.  I am currently on vacation in Palm Springs trying to get a tan before my friend’s wedding, so I can’t post the Sweet Melissa’s recipe right now, but I will try to get it up for you soon.  I do highly recommend buying the book yourself though as it is full of great recipes for all sorts of occasions.

As you can see I used the stamping technique on fondant again for the tiny circles around the cake.  I added the tiny dots of royal icing to the bottom of the cake board and the border of the frame for added detail and luster dusted the whole cake to give it a shimmer.  I love the detail of the pregnant lady, especially her little heart on the belly for the baby inside!    

 Thanks for taking a look!