Baby Shower Cake

Recently I was invited to my first baby shower. I have always associated these with being an American event but it seems more and more people are beginning to hold them over here.

I wish I could of had one as it was really good fun. Big excuse for a group of women to get together and have fun.

I was slightly hesitant about going as I still feel like the new girl up here despite having grown up here. The pregnant lady in fact went through school with me and I really like her, although at school she was in the 'in' crowd and intimidated and scared me! How it changes as adults and when you get to know someone.

We were all asked to bring some food to the shower and I was asked to do a cake.

I decided I wanted to do something fun, N knew she was having a girl so of course I wanted to theme it this way.

I baked 2 square maderia cakes - I choose maderia as it is more of a solid cake than say a sponge and easier to carve if needs be, less crumbly too. I added a little red food dye as well to make the sponge turn out pink. These I cut into rectangles of the same size, stacked on top of each other with a layer of butter cream and covered with butter cream and then some ready to roll icing which I coloured green. I then added a strip of white icing to make it look like a bed.

Next job was to use the spare bits I had cut of the cake and make a couple of pillows by covering them in white icing and placing at the head of the bed - a simple brush of water over the icing is enough to make them stick.

I then set to work on my pregnant woman. I really enjoy doing sugar paste figures but have not yet been able to master how to give women natural looking boobs! At this stage I was using about half ready to roll icing and half petal paste so the figure would dry harder and hold it's shape. I coloured a little flesh coloured, and then some pink for the dress. The pregnant lady has ginger hair which was a little more difficult to do (I really need to invest in some orange dye)

Finally I placed my pregnant lady on the bed and put in the finishing touches and

Ta Da......

Bit graphic but everyone had a good laugh over it - the pregnant one laughed so much she had to sit down and accused us of trying to send her into labour!!

So that is how to make a baby shower cake.
(For those of you who fancy trying this or any other cake for that matter, don't use the liquid food dyes you would use in icing sugar and water as they make the ready to roll icing too sticky, you need to get pots of colour from a bakers or off the Internet).