sweet pea baby shower cake

Our good friends Cindy and Kai (the same couple who I made wedding cupcake pops for a couple of years ago) were going to have a large co-ed baby shower, and asked me to make a small cake for the dessert table.  The cake would not be intended to feed the guests, rather it would just be a little cake just for Cindy and Kai to enjoy together afterwards.  They mentioned that the colors would be yellow and green, and that they would like a "sweet pea" theme, so I set out to make them a little 6-inch sweet pea baby shower cake!

For the filling, I decided on freshly whipped cream and sliced strawberries, since I know Cindy likes her desserts on the lighter side and not too sweet.

For the cake, I made two 6-inch chocolate cake layers - the layers came out rather tall, so I decided to split them in half, giving me 4 chocolate cake layers.

Then I whipped up a batch of cream cheese buttercream, colored the majority of it a golden yellow, did a quick crumb coat of frosting, and then covered the sides with a basketweave design using a Wilton #47 tip.

After mixing all the frosting colors that I would need for my sweet pea design (chocolate brown, green, darker green, and ivory for a flesh tone), I piped the sweet pea in the middle of the cake, followed by a congratulations message in chocolate brown frosting.

The baby shower was a blast; there were lots of games and activities, and they had a mix of all their favorite foods and desserts.

My favorite part was the hands-free baby bottle beer drinking contest!

Congratulations Cindy and Kai!  Thanks for inviting us to celebrate with you, and I hope you enjoyed the cake!

pink and white baby shower cookies and macarons

To go along with the elephant baby shower cake that I made for my friend Helen's baby shower, I also made elephant cookies, onesie cookies, and pink strawberry macarons for the dessert table!

For the elephant cookies, I used my favorite sugar cookie and royal icing recipes.  Once the dough was chilled, I rolled it out, cut out my elephants, then baked them at 350F for 10-12 minutes.

Once they were cooled, I outlined them with pink stiff royal icing, and then filled them in with pink runny royal icing.

After letting the cookies dry for a few hours, I used a darker shade of pink to pipe the outline and the ears, and then the eyes with black royal icing.

For the onesie cookies, which I've made several times in different colors (see here, here, and here), I followed the same steps, except that I made them white with pink outlines, and little pink heart in the center of each onesie.

Then I let the cookies dry overnight, before wrapping them in cellophane bags tied with raffia and a custom favor tag.

Next for the macarons!  For the macaron shells, I used the same recipe as I did here, but made them pink with strawberry filling like I did here.  Except I made them a darker pink.  Then I piped them on a silpat, and let them rest for 20 minutes before baking them.

They came out of the oven with beautiful ruffled feet!

Then I filled them with cream cheese buttercream mixed with fresh strawberry puree.

You can click here to see more pictures of the baby shower, which was featured on the Hostess With The Mostess blog!