Luau Baby Shower

 Happy Monday! This past weekend brought a cute little baby shower for a great couple! Congrats again Leslie, Chris and big brother Ben! The theme was "little girl luau" and the need to add in elements from the invitation was a must!

The Mom-to-be loves my Lemon Chiffon cake with lemon curd buttercream but I changed it up a bit by coloring the buttercream pink first and then filling the cake so when we cut into it you get a punch of bright yellow and pink too! 

 The full set up on the cake table included flower leis around the cake plate, colorful plates, cute napkins, flower confetti and the little "message in a bottle" favors on a bright purple tablecloth. If you'd like to see the full party set up just check out the Cherry Party Blog!

To decorate the cake I started with the pink buttercream. I wanted the surface to look like a rough stucco of a California beach building. Now I have no idea if other states have these buildings where you have restrooms, showers and usually a covered patio with picnic tables to hang out at but here in California we do. Ok, they don't always have the covered patio, but the buildings are there. I wanted to mimic that surface so what I did was frost the cake with the pink frosting and then before it could crust up I used the tip of the offset spatula to "swipe" horizontally along the side from top to bottom. About 3 swipes to do a side. This created a wonderful "stucco" texture!

 I then added the brown "sand" frosting and sprinkled on the gold and white "sand" sugar crystals. The trunks on the palm trees are just fondant snakes that I used a pointed fondant tool to make the texture. Those went onto the cake first and then I piped the clothesline from tree to tree. I layered on the leaves and topped those with little balls of brown fondant that I had punched 3 holes for the coconut look. The bib, onesie and socks were all cut out with an exacto knife used just for caking and then I used pink fondant to trim those. The new baby's name begins with an A so I used the onesie to personalize the cake. 

Next came the baby. I didn't make the baby. I know another caker who has the baby mold so I bought an undecorated fondant baby from her. I hand painted blonde hair onto the baby and added a fondant diaper and grass skirt. I used a mini flower punch to make the hibiscus and attached that with a dab of water. The mat is just tan fondant rolled out and scored with a fondant tool and trimmed in darker fondant. I used a bit of frosting to attach the mat to the cake and then brushed the underside of the baby with a bit of water to attach it to the mat.

The leaves on the palm trees had quite a bit of tylose in them to allow them to stand up 3D on the cake so, along with the sea turtle and baby, the trees were removed from the cake before cutting. 

The sea turtle relaxing on the sugar sand beach was hand molded out of fondant with tylose. I kneaded in some extra green into the fondant and then divided in into 8 pieces. One each for the body, head, front flippers, back flippers, tail and shell. I used water to glue it all together and then handpainted the shell with some golden yellow gel food coloring. This went into the shell "cracks" and then I diluted that color with a bit of clear alcohol. This left the cracks defined but then added a more yellow/green look to the entire shell.

This was my last major cake for the Fall. Good thing since I need to let this finger actually heal up. So for the next few weeks I'll share a few smaller items I have coming up as well as feature some really awesome cake artists that I know online. See you next week!


Cat