Happy Sunday and Happy Father's Day to those "Down Under"! Hope you are having a fun time celebrating with your families! Today I bring you a Baby Shower cake from last weekend.

The Theme was bears and bees and since this is their second child they wanted to make sure the first child wasn't left out so we incorporated little details just for her into the cake. The cake is a lemon chiffon with both fresh sliced strawberries and strawberry preserves for the filling. Everything on the outside of the cake is fondant except for the "grass" which is piped buttercream.

One of the "secrets" of this cake is the ribbon around the middle. For many cakers the biggest frustration is the filling "bulge". And with fresh fruit cakes there just doesn't seem to be a way around it. Once the cake settles, the fruit slides and pushes out the buttercream "dam" and you end up with a bulge. Even after you have cleaned up that bulge, once you put the fondant on top the weight of that is going to make the cake settle and yup, you guessed it, bulge. But if you can place some sort of decoration at that point of the cake then you have a chance of camouflaging it as I did with the ribbon. Is there still a bulge...yup but it looks just fine with the ribbon over it. 

 The other part of the details which disguises the bulge is the bees. Just little half rolls of yellow fondant with black stripes and details, these little guys took the better part of an afternoon to do just because the details are so small. I rolled out white fondant really thin and then cut small circles and gently stretched them out to make the wings. Then I layered two together and placed them on the cake where I wanted to place a bee and then just stuck the bee on top. Once all the bees were in place I added the "trails" from one bee to the other all the way around the cake. These bees were a hit with the other kids at the party. One little boy said he needed another one to eat because his first one "flew away" LOL! 

The bow is also fondant and I mixed just a bit of tylose into the fondant to help it dry up quickly. I rolled out a strip of the fondant and then pinched/rolled the center. I then used the handles of two of my fondant tools as a brace as I rolled the ends of the strip back to the middle. I let that set up for a few moments so the water I used as glue could work and then flipped the bow over and fluffed it up a bit. Once the bow was completely dry I was able to remove the tools and have a stand up bow. At that point I added the middle bow piece and added it to the cake. The plaque is just thick white fondant with a thin piece of blue layered on top. 

Finally we get to the topper. Here is the other "secret" of this cake. The bee hive is actually a hidden cupcake! This was the first child's own personal part of the cake. She was delighted! To make this I just cut off part of the dome on the cupcake so it would sit flat upside down on the cake board. Then I crumbcoated it with buttercream and finally covered it with the yellow fondant "snakes" to make the hive. Of course at the bottom of the cupcake, which is now the top since we turned it upside down, is flat so I rolled up a fondant egg and put that on top so I could continue the hive cone. When we served it to the little girl we removed the top of the cone so she was left with fondant and cupcake only.

The bear is the same one I covered a few weeks ago in the tutorial. He is a keepsake. When you let fondant dry out enough it becomes hard as a rock. It's mainly sugar after all. This you can keep in a low humidity place for, literally, forever. And because every part of him is toothpicked together he will stay put together. A fun keepsake from the party once it is over. 

And speaking of the party! I will be covering that one tomorrow on the Cherry Party Blog, http://thecherryontopevents.blogspot.com/ ,
 so make sure to check that one out tomorrow for some great Baby Shower ideas!
See you next week!

Cat