Baby Shower

My sister-in-law Fawn is a master cake decorator. She actually sells the cakes that she makes and decorates. (Check out her new cake blog http://buttercream.wordpress.com/) When we lived in the same ward, she taught a series of cake decorating classes as enrichment activities. We learned how to split and fill a layered cake, how to make royal icing flowers, and (my favorite) how to use fondant. I really caught the bug when I got to go over to her house to "help her" with a cake project. Mostly, I got to watch her work and learn from the master. (Thanks Fawn!) Let me just tell you that it is harder than it looks to make it look like the pictures in the books, but it is a lot of fun trying.

Last Saturday Monica, Maren and I combined forces and threw a baby shower for someone in the ward who is expecting her first baby (a girl) in April. We decided to make it a "Little Princess" party, and I got to work looking for the perfect cake for the occasion. I looked through my books, and searched the Internet and decided to make a tufted pillow cake with a princess tierra or crown on top of it.

There was a pattern for a crown in one of my books, but it looked way too complicated and intricate. Plus, they wanted me to make it out of royal icing, which I think, is hard to work with.



I went on line found a couple great tierras that I could use as patterns. Here is the one I chose.


I enlarged the picture, printed it out, traced it onto parchment paper, taped the parchment onto an upside down 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup, and piped over the pattern in melted white chocolate. I worried that it wouldn't be strong enough to hold, but once the chocolate dried, it was solid and strong. And as Henry put it when he saw it, "Wow, That's beautiful!"




I made the cake from a Cake Mix Doctor book. It was an almond, cream cheese pound cake and filled it with a strawberry cream. I made and colored the marshmallow fondant ahead of time, and Michal helped me make the butter cream icing. Maren came over and we worked together, rolling out the fondant, putting it on the cake, quilting, painting and tufting, buttoning... and admiring. Like I said, it is harder than it looks to make it look like the pictures in the books, but it is a lot of fun trying. Here are a few pictures of our finished product.







The cake was definitely impressive, but you should have tasted the food! I made a craisin/feta/candied almond green salad with Trader Joe's raspberry dressing. Monica out
did herself with chicken salad sandwiches on mini croissants, feta/pine nut/baby spinach/pesto bow tie salad, and cream cheese toffee and citrus marshmallow dip for the fruit platter.

Everyone went home with warm harts, full bellies,

and a gift from the crown jewels.