Baby Shower Cake Decorating Ideas

There’s nothing more precious than a newborn baby. So to make your baby shower cake fittingly sweet, here are some baby shower cake decorating ideas. First consider the theme of the baby shower. If you are planning the shower, you could even plan the theme around the cake. Do keep in mind Mom’s preferences. If she has colors and a theme picked for the nursery, this could be your cue. Here are a few of the most popular baby shower themes, followed by cake decorating ideas to match, along with a recipe.

Nursery rhymes: “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” is especially popular and works well with themes that use blue. The “Little Star” also makes a nice metaphor for the new baby. Whatever nursery rhyme theme you choose, make it a lighthearted and positive one.

Baby Animals: Ducklings like many other baby animals are popular for obvious reasons. The yellow ducky gets extra votes for being one of baby’s first bathtub toys. Cute and cuddly, the teddy bear is also a popular theme. And what could be sweeter than a newborn lamb, other than the baby on his or her way?

Butterfly: It’s hard to miss the analogy here, and like many of the above themes, butterfly themes can be any color, from gentle pastels to bold and bright.

Baby Blocks: Perhaps one of the reasons this theme is so popular, besides the fact that blocks are a classic learning toy for babies and young children, is that the blocks can spell out baby shower messages on invitations and cake. Also, pictures on blocks often depict cute baby animals or bright and cherry things with names that begin with each block’s letter, like an airplane with a cute face.Perhaps one of the above inspired a cake design idea. If not, here are some cute ideas to use as is or to jumpstart your own.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Cake – A cake covered with soft blue fondant (we recommend marshmallow fondant ) or buttercream makes a pretty background for a fondant cut-out or piped icing depicting the “Little Star.” Add a cheery face to the star with the blue or another color, and pipe a cute message.

Yellow Ducky Cake – This can take its form from a novelty cake pan, or because it’s such a simple design, a quarter or half sheet cake could be trimmed into the shape of the duckling. Another idea: pipe the outline of a pond onto a cake, fill with blue gel or buttercream and then add piped or marzipan modeled yellow ducks to the pond. For a fun play on “shower,” add some raindrops and make the pond a rain puddle.

Butterfly Cake – Decorate the baby shower cake with a whimsical flower garden and add butterfly picks (from a craft store). The flowers could be piped with icing, modeled with marzipan or molded with gumpaste molds. A really cute addition would be a baby crawling among the flowers and butterflies, especially if the flowers are on stems, depicting a real garden.

Petit Four Baby Blocks – These are perfect for a baby shower tea! Petit fours are often made with almond flavored cake, filled with fruit preserves, and then covered with poured fondant* and decorated.

Each baby block could be decorated with a buttercream piped letter on top. These could be arranged on a pretty cake board to spell out your baby shower message. The other petit fours could be decorated with cute pictures of nursery items such as teddy bears, rattles, baby clothes, and such. Stack in an attractive arrangement behind the message. *Poured FondantPetit Four Fondant

• 2 pounds sifted powdered sugar (8 cups)
• 2/3 cup water
• 3 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 2 teaspoons clear vanilla or almond flavor.
• Food color (optional)

Combine all of the ingredients, except for the food color, in a saucepan. Warm the mixture over low heat just until the sugar dissolves and becomes smooth. If you want to tint your fondant, add the food coloring, one drop at a time. Use very sparingly because a little color goes a long way and will darken as it dries. Keep the icing warm while in use, but don’t let it go over 100 degrees F. You can either dip or pour fondant to cover cakes.

This recipe and many of the above tips and baby shower cake decorating ideas are adapted from “Cake Decorating Made Easy!“ Here’s what one reader had to say about our Video Books:

“Anyone could learn from these…you don’t have to already know anything about cake baking to learn from this series – they are fool proof.” K. Bryan, Anniston, Alabama.

And here’s one more tip from our Video Books for your Baby Shower Cake: If you make the petit fours with poured fondant, store in a covered cardboard box in a cool dry place such as an air-conditioned room, or if they contain perishable fillings, in the refrigerator.

However, fondant will soften or dissolve with a build up of condensation, so allow your petit fours to gradually warm up to room temperature. It’s best to place them in an air-conditioned room but if that’s not possible, set them up in front of a clean fan, for an hour or two and the gentle blowing breeze should dry up any extra moisture.