Baby Shower Crib Cake

I’m typing this entry fresh from a night-out with my mommy friends.  If you spot some misspelled words along the way and some grammatical errors, you can go ahead and blame the strawberry margarita. *wink*

Prior to last weekend, I have never made a cake for a baby shower.  I almost had my chance around Thanksgiving last year.  Unfortunately, I had to decline.  Accepting the request to do a baby shower cake then would have meant working on the cake on Thanksgiving Day, which was impossible because we were entertaining friends. It would have also meant missing out on Black Friday sales. Yes, yes, I had my priorities then.

When the opportunity  to do a baby shower cake presented itself, I pounced on it like a hungry lioness. Last weekend, I worked on not one but two baby shower cakes!  One for a baby girl and one for a baby boy.  Let me show and tell you about the cake for the baby girl…

The first baby shower was last Saturday, back-to-back with a 3rd birthday party (for which I also made the cake, the Princess Cake with the mini dresses!).  You can just imagine how busy I was last weekend and the days leading to it.  I must have developed my arm muscles double time without any creatine supplements. Kidding! For my gal pal who was expecting a baby girl, I made a Crib Cake…

Why a crib cake?  Because if I remember correctly, on her last baby shower, she already had a beautiful cake with booties and a gorgeous quilt.  So I thought I’d make her a cake that was a tad different from the last one.  This was a Vanilla Chiffon Cake with Custard Filling.

The panels for the crib were cut from gumpaste as early as Wednesday in the hope that they will dry out by the time I were to use them.  I should have been a little more generous with the tylose powder.  The panels didn’t dry as hard as I thought they would.  At one point, I even thought they’d break.  Thankfully, they didn’t.  I had the cake on my lap during the drive to the party.  And I had my hands gently pressing on the side panels, which was all they needed to really stick to the bed part of the crib.

A crib wouldn’t be complete without a blanket, a few pillows and a baby bottle just lying around. ;) I have finally gotten the hang of using my stitching tool.  Yeah!  And because I didn’t get to work on the cake until about after  2pm (party time was 5:30pm), I missed adding some details to one of the decorations…

The pink teddy was faceless. :P  I still think it’s cute.  Hee hee.

Overall, I think I did a pretty good job,  considering this was a first for me and given the amount of time I had to work  on the cake.  I’m actually quite pleased!  I love the colors and how everything just came together.

Two things I’m taking away from this crib cake experience: 1) Don’t be too lazy to make royal icing! 2) At least make the effort to sketch my ideas and not just keep them in my head.

I can almost hear Baby Kandice saying, “Welcome to my crib!”  Sounds remotely familiar?

Cheers, y’all!  Mabuhay!