My sister-in-law and her friends were throwing a baby shower for a little baby boy and requested the shower cake…. theme was baby boy, fishing and camouflage. To me that meant baby blue, camo-something, and fish. This was going to be fun!
Lots of cake, flavors and themes; Baby boy, fishing, camo, and daisies.
I started putting my ideas down in a drawing; figuring the size of everything, how it would fit and how many it would feed. I asked what flavor of cake and got three answers! So to satisfy everyone; the bottom is going to be a chocolate cake with half chocolate fudge and half peanut butter/chocolate filling with chocolate fudge frosting. The middle tier will be German chocolate cake with coconut/pecan filling and milk chocolate frosting. And the top of the cake would be a cereal-treat bassinet with gum paste baby boy, surrounded by white cupcakes. The cupcakes would have lemon curd filling with lemon frosting and be topped with gum paste daisies.
My dilemma with this cake was that the baby shower was over two hours away. It would be better for me to go up the day before and put this cake together at my parent’s house; much closer to the shower.
I went ahead and did all the baking needed for the cake; two 14″ chocolate layers, two 6″ German chocolate layers, and twenty-four white cupcakes. I wrapped the cakes and kept them in the freezer until I was ready to make the drive.
Lemon filled cupcakes with camouflage fondant and gum paste daisies.
I made the white gum paste daisies and leaves; then went on to the the baby boy. But I wasn’t sure of the size, so I made the cereal treat wicker basket first and found that I only needed half a baby, as I would cover the bottom part with a blanket. Yea! The fishing pole and red/white bobber were next. When finished I set them all out to dry.
My sister, who is the master of marshmallow fondant, came over and made a few batches; one blue, one green, and we left one batch white so I could color later, as needed.
The day before the shower I packed up everything I could think of. I knew I was going to have to take almost all my cake decorating supplies since I’d be out in the boonies, as far as cake decorating is concerned. Don’t get me wrong, I love these boonies!
This time I packed the daisies in a box with tissue and headed up to the hills. Everything made it safely after nearly two hours of driving. I felt like I invaded my mother’s kitchen…let’s face it, I did. But the cake had to get made. Time to start working. During the drive the cakes had almost defrosted, so I started by frosting them.
Lower tier of cake with wave detail and colored goldfish, finished with little balls.
Next was to get the fondant on everything before I stopped for the night. The blue fondant over the large cake went quick. I had my water layer almost figured out. I took the ball tool and scored some waves around the cake, before it set too much.
I had designed the middle cake to be covered in green fondant with a quilted look to it. After I quilted the green layer I put a dark green band around the bottom.
At this point I realized my original plan for the cupcakes needed to change. I was going to make cupcake wrappers out of a camouflage paper, but I decided to make camo fondant instead and set the daisies on top of that. I actually liked this idea better! I had a medium brown fondant already and just added more white to lighten up some. That took care of two colors for the camo. I darkened some of the green I had used for the middle tier and now I had all four colors. To make the camo, I just made little balls of color, set them next to each other, then rolled them out melding all together. I found this was easier and I was able to make enough for three or four cupcakes at a time. Any more than that dried out by the time I got the cupcakes covered or the fondant colors got too blended with re-rolling.
Baby boy with pacifier fishing from wicker basket.
Of course changing the camo placement meant I would have to change the blanket over the baby. I used the blue, but embossed it with a little boy print of frogs, worms and dragonflies. Too cute! I draped it over the baby in the basket, after setting the basket on top of the cake.
It was getting very late…I would finish the rest of the cake in the morning.
I woke up with a plan for the bottom of the cake. I made little brightly colored fondant fish and placed them around the side of the cake. Then I added a lot of little blue balls to finish off around the bottom of the cake.
The criteria was baby boy, camouflage and fishing…
Almost finished… I set  nine cupcakes around the small cake and placed a daisy on each one. Then I used some extra flowers and leaves to add some floral touch to balance to the draped blanket on top of the cake. The fishing pole was set in place last. Baby boy, camouflage, and fishing…Check.
