baby shower duckie cake and cupcakes

To go along with the baby shower duckie and onesie cookies that I made a while back, I also made an 8-inch red velvet cake, one dozen chocolate cupcakes, and one dozen vanilla cupcakes.  For the red velvet, I used a recipe from Martha Stewart's "Cupcakes" book, except that I baked it in two 8-inch pans instead of making cupcakes.  Then for the filling, I whipped up a batch of cream cheese frosting and spread it onto the first layer of cake.

For the frosting, I made a batch of buttercream, and then added a stick of cream cheese to it at the end (this is my favorite frosting to use lately).  Then I tinted it lightly with sky blue coloring, to match the blue in the onesie cookies that I had made.

After first adding a "crumb coat" of frosting and letting that set in the fridge for a bit, I added another layer of frosting to the top only, and smoothed it out as well as I could with an offset spatula.  Then I piped on a basketweave design on the sides of the cake.

To finish off the basketweave design, I piped on a shell border around the top and the bottom of the cake.

Next I piped on a duckie using yellow frosting for the body, orange frosting for the beak, and brown frosting for the eyes.  I filled in the duckie body with a star tip, and used a #3 tip to pipe a swirly design for the wing.

The final touch was to pipe on a congratulations message with melted chocolate!

Since the cake would not be enough to serve the guests, I also baked one dozen chocolate cupcakes, and one dozen vanilla cupcakes.  I used the same piped basketweave design to cover half of them with blue frosting, and half of them with white frosting.  Then all of them were topped with a little piped yellow duckie, the same way I did the duckie cupcakes that I made a couple years ago.

I hope the happy parents-to-be enjoyed all of the goodies!