Double Baby Shower Cake and Party!

We had a double baby shower for my co-workers who are expecting just a few short weeks apart from each other. Not only did I make the cake but I co-hosted the shower so I had the rare opportunity to actually eat some of the cake that I made. Usually I just drop the cake off for delivery.

The cake is an 11x15" sheet vanilla cake with sweet buttercream. I piped pink and blue star borders and writing. The onesies are cut from fondant rolled out 1/16" thick, using the Wilton baby cutter set.

Styling for the baby shower. I used leftovers and extras that I've saved from previous baby showers for my sister. Added in some extra balloons. I found adorable "it's a boy" and "it's a girl" Hershey's kisses at Michael's.

We played games including guessing the date and time of both baby's' arrival and their weight and length. Cut ribbon to guess the size of the belly's. The clothespin game where you try not to say "baby" and if you do you get your clothespin stolen. I also brought a jar of gumballs. We were going to have a contest to see who could blow the biggest bubble before it popped. Prizes were Jelly Belly's, how appropriate. ;)

Crafts: Zachariah's Smash Cake Decor

The smash cake session for my nephew was beyond adorable. Here's what we did.

We used a silver plastic table cloth from Oriental Trading and hung it from a wall using masking tape, draping the cloth onto the floor to protect it from cake debris, and taping it to the floor as well. This was an awesome setup because after the smashing, all we had to do was remove the props and roll all the mess up and straight into the trash. Easy clean-up!


I found wood cut letters at walmart and used black spray paint around the edges and blue acrylic paint on the face to spell out his name and hung them from under the windowsill.

The piñata is hand cut from a cardboard box, covered with fringed tissue paper and 2 glue sticks worth of glue. The key to a sturdy piñata is to work with the shape of the box. I never cut the corner on the base where it attached to the front. Or the two side pieces on the bottom of the 1. After marking the piñata in 1 in bands all the way around, I alternated 2 strips of dark blue with 1 strip of light blue tissue paper and filled in any sparse areas. Since this was just a decorative piece and not an actually candy holding, hitting piñata, I didn't have to keep a fill hole. I did still add a loop of string in case we were to hang it somewhere.

Toss in 3 balloons of coordinating colors.

Crafts: Baby Shower Cupcakes and Cookies

 Custom made signs and cupcake picks. I made green and blue circles in Paint and added the text inside each circle. Printed off two copies of each circle onto 5x7" unlined index cards. Cut around each circle. Then glue them together so the front and back texts matched using non-toxic glue. The picks read: Little Boys? Snips and Snails & Puppy Dog Tails That's What They Are Made Of. I used ribbon from walmart to decorate the edge of the cupcake stand.

The Signs are in the same blue and green and were used on the food table. The clothesline sign was hung on the door to greet guests.

The same ribbon was used to tie shut the wrappers on the cookie pops.

"Corduroy"

The newest addition!

My best friend had her baby shower today. I wasn't originally set to make her cake but the lady that was supposed to be making it had to back out due to family visiting. I was more than happy to take her up on the offer. I was given the instructions that the color theme was blue/green, the character is Corduroy the bear, and she wanted the message to be welcome baby boy. What could be more fitting than a 2 tier cake with Corduroy and his buttons? I was also told no chocolate; she prefers vanilla, white chocolate, cream cheese and the sort. So I decided on a white chocolate cake with a vanilla buttercream frosting. I used the frozen buttercream transfer method to make white buttons for the sides, outlined a white bear, and did the message "Welcome Baby Boy Campbell!" around the top button and even left holes just as a real button would have. I used food coloring diluted with vanilla flavored vodka to hand paint Corduroy on the frozen buttercream. The alcohol evaporates, leaving the vanilla flavor behind. Cakes were torted with buttercream also.

White Chocolate Cake
I used this recipe but for 18 servings. This was enough for one 6x3" round, and two 10x2" rounds*.

3-3/4 cups all purpose flour
1-1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
9 (1 ounce) squares white chocolate, chopped
3/4 cup hot water
1-1/2 cups butter, softened
2-1/4 cups white sugar
5 eggs
1-1/2 cups buttermilk

Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In saucepan melt white chocolate with hot water, allow to cool. Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time. Stir in flour mixture alternatively with buttermilk. Mix in melted white chocolate.

*Since I use my Wilton pans, they come with instructions of how much batter to use for each pan. Pans are misted with oil, coated in flour and parchment is cut to fit the bottom. Bake at times listed for pan size 350 degrees.

Vanilla Buttercream
Doubled the recipe to have enough for all the colors, torting and frosting.

1 cup solid vegetable shortening (Crisco)
1 cup butter, softened
2 tsp clear vanilla extract
8 cups powdered sugar, sifted
4 tablespoons milk

Cream together butter and shortening. Add vanilla. Add sugar 1 cup at a time, scraping down bowl periodically. Add milk, beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Separate into smaller dishes and add gel food coloring until desired color is reached. I used 1/2 cup for black, 3 1/2 cups white (to torte and crumb coat) and divided the rest into blue and green.

Frozen Buttercream Transfer
Made a large button outlined in black, with green writing that said "Welcome Baby Boy Campbell!", then filled it in with white buttercream. Just follow her directions and remember to use the mirror image!

Baby Shower Spice Cake Cupcakes

The second treat featured at the baby shower were these Spice Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting, blue sugar crystals and cupcake picks. I used blank 4x6" index cards and created the circles and words in Microsoft Paint to make the cake picks. I printed them out in doubles, cut around each circle then glued them together with a toothpick in the middle.

I also created the signs for the treats and folded them in half. I did not get a chance to make fresh cinnamon buns-from-the-oven however, I was too exhausted from two days of baking and decorating to pull that off.

I used the 1M Wilton swirl technique with a 10" decorating bag and a star tip 195 (?). The cupcake stand is a cardboard, assemble yourself Wilton kit that I added some of the same It's a Boy! ribbon to with a hot glue gun.

I grouped the cake picks on each level of the cupcakes and voila!

Baby Shower Sugar Cookies

My sister had her baby shower at 23 weeks on December 1st. We decided to have it so early because she is due in March and didn't want to have people driving in the snow in January. I volunteered to do decorations and make the sweets. The baby's nickname is Sugar until she can pick a name for her little boy. The nursery is going to be guitar/rock 'n roll theme. So her best friend and I decided we would do sugar and spice and everything nice, snips and snails and puppy dog tails, and focus more on the boy theme of it. We also incorporated a playlist based around the sugar theme and Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar on Me (since it is a baby shower for the mom) was our rock 'n roll choice.

My idea was already set around sugar cookies and some kind of spice cake. I had seen some baby onesie cookie cutters and the cookies were made into pops. I knew that would be fun! I used Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix (1 large and 1 small bag) to make 20 cookies total since we were unsure of a final head count. I used Wilton color flow mix and followed the directions for regular consistency and flow consistency. This was dyed blue with Wilton food coloring in royal blue. I used tip 1 for the outline and once the icing was thinned a used a larger petal tip to fill in and a toothpick to spread to all the edges.

I was going to add Baby and the snaps to the onesie once the color flow had dried but I had spent 8 hours working on these cookies and gave up. It took a lot of flour on the cutting board and rolling pin to keep from sticking. I rolled the dough out to 1/4", cut the shape, placed it on the cookie sheet with parchment paper, placed a stick 3/4 of the way up the length of the cookie, cut another and placed it on top. Make sure to get out any air bubbles between the layers and around the stick or your baby will look like it has a hernia.

Once the cookies had cooled enough to be iced, that was allowed to harden for a few hours. The next day I wrapped them in treat bags and tied a ribbon around them to tie them closed.

At the party we couldn't think of a cute way to display these so we just made a pile with a cute sign in front.

Aren't they adorable? They were a hit and since the turnout was small, everybody took some home with them.