Welcome Baby Sebastian!

Blue Elephant Cake

I love that I have so many circles of friends.  My friends, my fellas friends, work, school, old friends... So many people to make happy with cake!

When someone at work retires, has a baby or is getting married, I wait for someone to ask me to make a cake for the party.  It doesn't always happen, but when it does, I get to go all out!

One of the newer staff members here had a baby back in October, and we have been waiting and waiting for little Sebastian to get a little bigger so we could all see him playing and laughing, rather than just sleeping in a car seat the whole time, being equally adorable, mind you.

I love making cakes for work, because I get full creative control.  I get told the number of people attending the shower, and the rest is up to me.

I noticed a really cute fondant elephant while researching, and rolled with that theme.  Blue elephants on a blue cake.  The elephants turned out perfectly.

I've been fiddling with my butter cream recipe, and think I have found a winner.  This one crusts slightly, and a trick of the trade is to let it harden slightly after spreading, then you lay a piece of paper towel on top and run your hand across it lightly.  Your body heat and the friction melts the top just enough to smooth it out, leaving you with a crisp surface.  I had never tried this before, and didn't notice the pattern in the paper towel until after I laid it on the cake.  I went ahead anyway, and to my surprise, instead of smoothing the cake out, the pattern was perfectly imprinted.  It looked like a little quilt in the background... I mean... I totally knew that was going to happen.

Sadly, I only have the one picture of this cake.  I thought I took more of the elephants, but I just had 12 of the overview of the whole cake :(  You'll just have to take my word for how cute they really are. I made it so the side ones ears all stuck out a little.

I hope you can see the great impression left from the smoothing failu... er... technique that totally exists.

My only critique after the fact is that I made the little elephants too thick, and they stuck out of the cake more than I wanted.  It would have been better off making them as thin as the one on top, and making the one on top a little thicker and a little more textured and shaped.  Lesson learned!

But I loved it anyway.  It's just such a cute cake, and the elephants could easily be replaced with teddy bears, ducks or owls.  Really anything cutesy and baby-y would work.  With a little practice this style could easily become my new favourite 'baby is here' baby shower cake.  It will never beat my 'before baby' shower cake.  Those are just too perfect.  I guess I should do a post on those... I haven't needed to make one for a while...