Unique Baby Shower Cake

When you decide to host a baby shower for a relative or close friend who’s expecting, one of the fun parts is to bake or order a fabulous cake.  As with a wedding, the cake can be a unifying centerpiece and depict the theme for the entire event.   You could go to the grocery store, pick out a sheet cake, and have the clerk there pipe the date in frosting and add a generic decoration.  But why not let your imagination run wild and design a unique cake for this special day?  Whether you bake it yourself or work with a baker, the cake can represent you and your love for the mom-to-be. 

To get ideas for the cake, first think of all the accoutrement surrounding a baby.  Here is a partial list of items associated with babies:  booties, blocks, teddy bear, nursery rhymes, stroller, bottle, pacifier, little feet, pregnant belly, stork, diaper pin, moon and stars.  Some of these items really lend themselves to being re-created in cake.  For instance, a stroller is mostly round shapes, with perhaps a little cutting and creative frosting to define the look of a stroller.  A lying-down teddy bear, too, can be created with different sized round cakes, or a sitting-up, three dimensional bear can be made from cake baked in bowls or bundt pans.

Experiment with placing cupcakes in the shape of baby booties and frosting them with different pastel colors.  Or bake lots of 6″ square cake layers, arrange in stacks of three, and frost in bright primary colors to represent blocks.  Add letters of the alphabet, drawn with frosting, to the “blocks.”  Or, if you already know the baby’s name, you could spell the name on the blocks.

Search specialty baking stores for cake pans in baby appropriate shapes.  You should be able to find pans in the shapes of bottles or rattles.  If they are smallish, you could bake several and decorate them all in a slightly different manner, so each guest has a unique cake. 

Lots of different cupcakes instead of one larger cake can be a creative answer to the cake dilemma.  You could simply frost many tiny cakes in all different pastel colors, including pink, blue, yellow, green, lavender, and ivory.  Or you could, in a few quick sessions, learn to use a piping bag well enough to create lots of frolicking little animals, like ducks, lambs, and chicks.

Let your imagination, and the notions you have about babies, guide you to creating a unique and beautiful baby shower cake.