BABIES!!!

From April 2008 until January of 2010 I attended the weddings of six very close friends and cousins in Utah, Chicago, California, and Puerto Rico. Of those I made a wedding cake for one and was a bridesmaid in the other 5 (maid of honor for one of those).

Guess which photo was taken on a windy and cold November day in Chicago??

Needless to say that was a very fun, exhausting, and expensive few years. Things in my life have slowed down a lot since then, but it looks like they're picking up again. More weddings you ask?? Nope. First comes love, then comes marriage...

... then comes baby in the baby carriage!

Look- it's an actual baby carriage!

Yup, 'tis the season for some baby makin'. In the past 2 years I've had a countless number of friends and cousins get pregnant and have kids. You'd think having a baby was contagious. Luckily for me, it's not. 

And luckily for me, people like it when you bring a beautiful cake to their baby showers. (This will be my 5th baby shower cake on the blog. Here are my previous one, two, three and four.)

This cake was for my good friend Jeanne. I met Jeanne ten years ago (YIKES!) when we did AmeriCorps together. The year after that we became roommates, and that was the year Jeanne met her future husband. The rest, as they say, was history.

So of course when they were having a baby shower I had to make the cake. I knew I wanted to try to make a carriage topper after seeing this tutorial on a cake blog I read. But for the rest of the cake, I was a bit inundated with ideas.

The inspiration, from Cake Fixation.

Check out her blog- it rocks my world!

And then I saw the decorations bought for the baby shower. I LOVED the color scheme and the stripes and circles. I instantly knew that the cake had to pick up on those themes.

I had also seen this awesome ruffle cake tutorial on you tube (linked from another baking blog I like). So it was time to mashup those two ideas into one. Ready to see how it all went down??

Using these paper lanterns as inspiration for the color scheme...

Yes, this is my friend's absolutely gorgeous house!

.... turned plain Swiss Meringue buttercream...

... into something a lot more exciting!

On a slight tangent: after I was done coloring the buttercream I realized that my trash- toothpicks covered with paste coloring that I'd throw on a paper towel- was too beautiful to not photograph. And I swear, the placement of my toothpicks in roughly rainbow order was completely unplanned!

Art in random places

   

OK, back to cake. I roughly marked my cake in 1" segments and made a few ribbons using the uncolored frosting.

Semi-nekked cake

Then I continued, with one color at a time, filling in each column in a beautiful ribbon pattern.

These candy-colored ribbons make me so happy!

The topper was made from a modified version of the tutorial on Cake Fixation and filled a little teddy bear so it wouldn't look quite so empty.

I made my entire carriage out of fondant (instead of fondant on styrofoam)- which is why the wire caved under the weight. But it still came out cute!

And it didn't just look good on the outside, it was beautiful on the inside too.

Luckily for me, the future parents agreed!

It was a beautiful shower, in a beautiful house, for a very beautiful and happy couple. Love you both- can't wait to meet the little guy!

Yours in celebrating life's milestones,
Jacqueline

p.s. Sorry, but no time for posting recipes today. I'll try to throw a quick post together in the next week or so with the details on the cakes. But just as a little teaser: I made a 6" chocolate cake with salted caramel buttercream and chocolate fudge frosting and an 8" white cake with raspberry filling and swiss meringue buttercream.

And yes, washing all those dishes is a bitch...