Gender Reveal Cake

This is by far the most exciting cake I have ever made.  My baking partner in crime is expecting and I can't be more excited for her.  I also couldn't have been more honored that she asked me to make a gender reveal cake for her.  Not only was she announcing to her family whether she was having a boy or a girl by cutting into a cake, but she and her husband also wouldn't know the gender.  At their ultrasound appointment, they had the gender sealed in an envelope which I picked up immediately following the appointment.  I have to say that I felt a little powerful knowing before they did what they were having.  It was a little sad to be celebrating all by myself in my car when I opened the envelope.  It was such exciting news!  

Meredith and I were both very excited about the party.  (If I was that excited, I can't even imagine how she and Jason were feeling.) We had talked, or dreamed, quite a bit about the party and she left the cake totally up to me.  Her decorations were going to be pink and blue, and that was my only direction. 

 

I had seen quite a few baby rump cakes online and for some reason really wanted to try to make one.  At this point, my experience with fondant was very minimal.  I had played around a little, but never came up with anything I really liked, just a few flowers here and there.  I really didn't think the fondant work would turn out as well as it did.

 

How Babies Are Made:

I started by following the Wilton directions to begin with.  As usual, I couldn't resist buying a gadget or two.  My first was the Wilton ball pan.  I don't want to sound like a huge Wilton fan, but what I do appreciate is that I can find their stuff locally, and when I want something, I want it now. 

 

To form the baby rump and legs, I used rice krispie treats.  I actually bought these because I had read that they were easier to work with.  I think for the price, I would make my own next time.  I actually dented the bottom of my pan trying to press them into it.  After a bit of frustration I put them in the microwave for just a few seconds and that made it much easier. 

After forming a half round of rice krispies, I cut small wedges out of the sides so the legs would fit in closer to the body.  Some of the examples I had seen were very round and not quite natural looking.  For the legs I formed little bananas.  Each was about a rice krispie treat and a half.  Finally for the feet, I squeezed in the sides of a rice krispie treat and smashed the corners in a little bit.  At this point, I could lay out my baby rump to see how it fit together.  I was starting to gain some confidence because it seemed to be proportioned about right.

My confidence pretty much got crushed when I tried to put a thick layer of frosting over the rice krispies.  I was making the cake topper about two weeks in advance, mostly because I was afraid it would take several attempts to get what I wanted.  For that reason, I figured it wouldn't actually get eaten and I used a more stable butter cream. It is really shortening cream.  It consists of a half cup of shortening, a pound of powdered sugar, and two tablespoons of water.  I would not put this frosting on a cake, but it was easy and stable for this project.  You might be asking why I bothered to make all of this edible if no one was going to eat it.  That is a good question.  I have no idea.  It just seemed like the thing to do.

I had a hard time frosting the feet and legs.  They were tough to hold and the rice krispies weren't well packed so I was changing the shape as i frosted them.  The frosting also didn't stick all that well.  I let it sit for a few minutes and was able to smooth it out a little.  The rump only got frosted on the top because it was hard to hang onto.  I did manage to get a little thicker layer on the rump.

I was glad to have that part over with.  Next, I was on to the fondant.  I like Duff's fondant.  In the little playing I had done with fondant before, I found Wilton's to get too dry and crack easily.  Duff's seems to stay softer longer and be easier to manage.  To get started with the fondant I broke off a chunk and put it in the microwave for just five seconds.  That isn't much time, but it was enough to make it workable.  I dyed maybe a quarter of the fondant a skin color.  I was afraid to dye too little and have to try to match the color.  It turned out I was cutting it close as there wasn't much leftover.  Some of the instructions were to use a thick layer of fondant so that you can make little creases and cute baby wrinkles in the skin.

 

It was hard to get the foot and leg to stick together.  If I did it again, I would frost them together instead of frosting them individually.  I rolled out the fondant to about an eighth inch thick using a rolling pin with bands to get a consistent thickness.  If you don't have bands for your rolling pin, you can lay the fondant between chopsticks or thin dowels so that the rolling pin lays on top of the dowels.  My advice here would be to make your pieces plenty big. 

 

My first leg came together amazingly easy.  I thought this was a piece of cake.  I draped the fondant over the top and smoothed it around the heel so that it indented at the ankle, then just wrapped my hands all the way around and pinched off the excess fondant.  There were a couple of bare spots on the under side of the leg, but it was really pretty easy. 

 

The second leg didn't go so well.  I would have liked a bigger piece of fondant and I just couldn't get it to lay right.  I ended up smashing it a bit too much and there were rice krispies visible on the side of the foot and on the heel.  Most people wouldn't notice the side, but the heel was a problem.  To make matters worse, I didn't have much skin tone fondant left and if I tried to dye more, it certainly wouldn't match the other leg.  I didn't want to redo both since the first one looked so nice.  I decided to try patching the heel. I knew there would be a little line, but I didn't expect the colors not to match.  I think it was just the amount that I had worked each piece that made a difference.  Also, be careful when you are working with fondant to use consistent amounts of shortening to keep it soft.  I had one shiny leg and one that was more dull.

 

The moral of the story, make sure you have plenty of fondant dyed when you start and make sure it is thick enough to work with.  After laying them both together I decided I was pretty happy with the results.  I could disguise my mistakes, but most likely no one besides me would notice.  To finish off the legs, I made little creases with the back end of a little paint brush and a fondant tool.  The toes were just little balls of fondant in cascading sizes.  I was a little paranoid about getting the toes on the wrong feet, but I managed to get that right on the first try.  The big toes go in the middle. 

For the diaper, I rolled white fondant a bit thicker than for the legs.  That was most likely out of paranoia from my heel incident.  I laid the round of fondant over the rump and made marks with the fondant tool to cut it in the shape of a the back half of a diaper. Then I laid that over the rump and legs and tucked it in around the edges.  It looked fine just the way it was, but I wanted to try and add some embellishment, so I tried the bands around the legs. They turned out pretty cute.  I used a stitching tool with a more round dot to roll on the pattern.  I wanted to do ruffles here, but thought they might be too girly.  When I was making my little rump I didn't know the gender yet.  To finish it off, I made some wrinkles in the diaper and called it a day. 

Kind of adorable right?  My husband's description was 'Creapy'.  I'll admit it was a little strange to open the fridge and find little legs, but I'll take it as a compliment on just how realistic it was. Just don't mind the hip joints.  They look a little funny.  I kept the topper in a cake carrier in the fridge. Inside the carrier it was lightly covered in plastic wrap. I was worried that it would dry out and crack, but I didn't have any issues.  As it dried the feet separated slightly, but I was able to push them back together later.

The next week I moved on to prepping the cake.  Do you ever have days (or in my case weeks) where you can't do anything right?  Besides my botched foot, the rump came together really well.  I'm glad I did it a week early.  The week of the gender reveal I had set aside for baking, making fillings and frosting, and getting ready to assemble once I found out if the cake should be blue or pink.

I learned a few very important lessons, and am so glad I didn't leave everything for last day. 

• Egg shells can be very different.  I hadn't really noticed that my first four eggs took a lot of force to crack.  I used the same force for the fifth egg and promptly smashed it into the counter.  It was one of those moments where I looked over my shoulder to make sure my husband hadn't seen my impressive display of skill.

• Bigger is not always better. Just because you need to feed 40 people doesn't mean you should make one big cake, especially when you would actually have to bake two cakes, and even more importantly, don't scale up a recipe you haven't made before. I started out using my favorite white wedding cake recipe, but substituting a strawberry cake mix. It turns out, I hate the color of the cake once it is baked. Also, I don't think strawberry cake mixes are flying off the shelf. There were lots of little hardened bits of sugar. I know I can be kind of picky, but I just couldn't serve this cake. Not to mention that my cute little topper would just look strange on such a big cake. I had done a 12" cake which even though it is just two inches wider than a 10" cake, it just looked too big!

• When making big cakes or using aluminum pans that aren't non-stick, always use cake release. Pam just doesn't cut it. Luckily I found a homemade cake release recipe for round 2. It worked like a charm. Round one left half of my giant strawberry cake in the pan.  I'm so happy to have this recipe.  It makes a lot, but I was always running out of the store bought and I'm sure this will be less expensive.  It was only three ingredients.  I'll just have to keep some Crisco in the house.

• Mise en place is important, especially when you are in a hurry. After reformulating my cake plans, I managed to not measure my lemon juice for my lemon curd. How did I forget to measure exactly? I set my fresh squeezed lemon juice by the mixer, and beside my measuring cup. When it came time to add the juice, I just poured it right in. That one actually seemed to turn out okay, but just to be on the safe side, I would recommend measuring in the future.
• Keep it simple. My original plan was to bake a white cake, then fill it with blue or pink filling. Then I saw pictures of perfectly colored pink and blue cake with white filling and they were adorable. So, I decided to bake both colors ahead of time so I could still just assemble the cake the day of. At this point, I was still on the 12" round two layer cake to feed 40. That is a lot of excess cake. I have the pink in the freezer. What on earth am I going to do with that much cake that I don't even like? Not to mention that going with strawberry for the pink meant two different flavors and two different combinations of cake filling and frosting. I should have stuck with the original simple plan. (I should mention that after finding out the gender I would only have from noon until five on Friday to get this done before I go to class for 3 hours, followed by class from 8 to 3:30 on Saturday with the party at 6:00) Simple is really important. I'm preaching simple, but I still ended up doing a cake flavor I haven't done before, two different fillings I hadn't done before, and a frosting that has always been my nemesis for cake decorating - cream cheese.

You could do any combination of cake, filling, and frosting that you want for this cake.  I was stuck on a lemon theme.  I used my trusty white almond wedding cake recipe substituting one box of lemon cake for one of the two boxes of white cake.  I didn't want the cake to be too yellow.  The flavor came out to be a mild lemon.  I liked it.  I made two 10" rounds.  I had a little leftover batter so I also made 9 cupcakes.  Each cake took about 6 cups of cake batter.  The whole recipe makes 15 to 15.5 cups of batter.

While the second layer of cake was baking, I made lemon curd.  The mother-to-be swears by this recipe.  It really worked out well and I followed the instructions just as they are.  There is also a nice step-by-step on Meredith's blog.  This is where I made my mistake of not measuring my lemon juice.  I think I was close though.  It was thick enough.  I also made sure to boil the lemon curd for a little bit.  Since I was serving it to a pregnant woman, I wanted to make sure the eggs were cooked.

The next component was a lemon cream.  This is what I planned to dye either pink or blue to indicate the gender.  The recipe I used was from Eat Cake for Dinner.  Make sure the wipping cream is whipped to stiff peaks.  It mixed up nice and thick, however, when I added the coloring, it thinned out a bit.

I made all the components (cake, lemon curd, and lemon cream) on Wednesday night.  On Thursday I started my decorations.  I dyed six different colors of fondant.  My colors were pale yellow, pale green, cornflower blue, light blue, pale purple, and pale pink. 

When I bought my fondant, I happened to see this button mold and it was too cute.  My first few attempts resulted in distorted buttons.  The trick was to dust the mold with a lot of cornstarch.  I had a little shaker and a little paint brush to get the button holes well coated.  The next thing I learned was to press the fondant into the mold with a piece of parchment.  It usually took a couple of tries to get the right amount of fondant to fill the hole.  If it was too much I pinched a little off and if it wasn't enough to fill the mold I added a little bit. When I was lucky, the fondant would stick to the parchment and come out of the mold easily.  If it stuck in the mold, i would fold the mold back so I could pry it out gently.  The ones I had to pry out distorted just a little, but not enough to be concerned about. I made between 6 and 12 buttons of each color.

On Friday at 11:15, I met Meredith and Jason in the parking lot to pick up my envelope and rushed home to start the cake assembly.  I needed to finish by 5:00 and I'm usually not too quick at assembling and frosting my cakes.  I was a little nervous. My cakes came out a little dark which I didn't like, so I shaved the sides of the cake and shaved the domes off the top.  I hate getting rid of the domes, because they are delicious, but I didn't want any extra challenges to deal with on a time crunch.  I wanted to do two layers of cream filling and one layer of lemon curd so I torted my cakes, or cut them each into two layers.

For each layer, I put a cream cheese frosting 'dam' around the edge.  For this I just use a disposable piping bag with the tip cut off.  You can use a ziploc bag with the corner cut off.  I guess if we are getting technical, you could use a non-disposable piping bag,  but I hate washing them.

Shhhhh - IT'S A GIRL!!!! I was so excited to dye the filling pink! Meredith will have the girliest little baby and Jason will be wrapped around her little finger.  Did I mention how happy I am for them?

Because lemon curd is amazing, the center layer of filling was lemon curd.  In hindsight, I would have just made this pink lemon cream also.  The cake could have used a little more pink, and I could have made one less filling.  You might notice that there is an awfully big ring of frosting around the lemon curd.  I was afraid of it leaking out although it was actually plenty thick.  This is an illogical fear from a previous caketastrophe.  Also, the top two layers of cake ended up a little smaller than the bottom, and I wanted to make sure it was covered.

The final cake was plenty tall.  You can see that the two cakes didn't get the sides taken off evenly.  The top cake was a bit smaller than the bottom.  I didn't create too much trouble.  In fact, I thought that frosting was actually a little easier with the edges cut off.  Often it seems like the frosting won't stick on the corners (where the sides meet the top) of the cake.  I didn't have that issue with the edges shaved.  I think because there wasn't a little ridge and the corners were sharper rather than rounded.  This might convince me to shave the edges in the future, but I'll be more careful to get them even. 

When it comes to frosting my cakes, I've finally decided on a method that works.  This was the most valuable thing I learned from Kristin at Buttercream Bella in Ankeny.  The tools I like are an angled spatula for the top, a straight spatula for crumb coating and loading the sides, and a drywall mudding tool to smooth the sides.  The first two weren't terribly expensive and I would consider them worth the money although you could get by without them.  The third is extremely inexpensive at your local hardware store.  You could also find a different tool for this job,but really, this one was less than $5.00.

 

I definitely believe in a crumb coat.  I've attempted to skip it before.  It always ends in disaster.  Get a small bowl of the frosting you are using, taken from the bigger batch.  That way you don't have to worry about dipping your crumb coated spatula into you clean frosting.  Just use the little bowl.  For a crumb coat on the sides use the straight spatula to scrape on a very thin layer of frosting.  This should seal all the crumbs in.  I also crumb coat the top using the angled spatula, although I have trouble getting it as thin. 

The next step is loading.  Make sure you have cleaned your spatulas before you start this step. You don't want any leftover crumbs on your spatula.  I hadn't frosted a cake in a while and did this in the wrong order.  You should first frost the top and allow the excess to hang over the edges of the cake. For the top, I like to use an angled metal spatula.  Next, frost the sides with the straight spatula.  The idea is to add frosting so you get to at least the thickness you want.  If you need more frosting in an area, get more from the bowl, the clean one this time.  Don't try to steal from somewhere on the cake.  This is a messy finish at first.  What you can't see in this picture is that there should be frosting from the sides sticking up a bit higher than the top of the cake.

Once you have loaded the cake, then you can create the smooth finish.  With my time crunch, and knowing that so much of the cake would be covered, I didn't spend much time working on a perfect finish. 

My favorite things: I LOVE my Ateco revolving cake stand.  LOVE IT!  I had a plastic turntable to start with, but it just didn't turn smoothly so this method of smoothing my frosting was not possible.  It would chatter as it went around if I went too fast or the cake was too heavy.  This has a nice heavy base and the top turns so easily.  I know this one is a splurge, but if you are going to buy one, skip the cheap plastic ones.  This is worth the money! 

To smooth the sides, hold the mudding tool so the blade is vertical, grip it like a big paint brush, with your hand holding the blade around the handle. This is a bit tough to describe.  With your right hand, hold the spatula on the left side of the cake.  Your arm should be crossing over in front of you to start.  With your left hand, reach around the right side of the base of the turntable and grab it as far around the back as you can.  You should be totally contorted with your arms crossed.  From there you should be able to give the turntable a single smooth turn all the way around.  With the blade on the side of the cake, give it a full turn, to smooth the sides.  This will take a little practice to get the angle of the spatula right.  It should be not quite 90 degrees with the edge of the cake and it needs to be absolutely straight up and down.

This is where I didn't waste much time.  Since I was going to put a ribbon around the bottom of the cake, I didn't bother to fill in all the way to the bottom.  It was also a little tough with the cake stand but it is easier on a cake board.  You can also see the little air bubbles.  With some extra time i would go back and fill them in and smooth the frosting again.  Since most of it was going to be covered I didn't take the time to do it.

The last step is to smooth the top.  There should be a lip of frosting sticking up above the top of the cake.  Take a clean angled spatula and pull that extra frosting into the center of the cake smoothing as you go.  It is important to keep the spatula level.  Again, this will take some practice.  For my central Iowa friends, if you want help with this technique, it is worth a cake decorating lesson with Kristin at Buttercream Bella.

My next tip is for putting the ribbon on the cake.  If you put the ribbon directly on the cake, the butter and moisture will discolor the ribbon rather unevenly.  To keep this from happening, I back the ribbon with clear packing tape.  Lay a long strip of tape out on the counter, sticky side up.  Stick the ribbon to it, smoothing it out as you go.  Then tear the excess tape off the sides so only the ribbon is showing.  Finally, wrap the ribbon around the cake, with bare ribbon facing out.  It can be a bit tough to get the pins through.

This is where I got to the fun part.  I finally got to add my baby to the cake! (I apologize for the not so great pictures.  I was running low on time!)  I put my baby close to the back of the cake, but if I did this again, I think I would center it.

Looking back this is where everything could have gone horribly wrong.  I really don't recommend doing this cake without having plenty of time.  To make the baby's blanket, I rolled out a large rectangle of white fondant.  Any color would have been fine, but it took quite a bit.  It was probably close to 1/4" thick.  In hindsight, I would make this much thinner, maybe 1/8" or less.  I had plenty of cornstarch sprinkled on the table when I rolled it out.  I also used a ruler and a sharp knife to trim it to a rectangle. 

You can see my rolling pin in the background with the spacers on the ends. Those came in handy.  One at a time, I rolled out small patches of fondant starting with the front left corner of the blanket.  I cut a square from each patch, painted a bit of water on the white fondant and stuck on the square.  I tried to keep the fondant covered with plastic wrap where I wasn't adding squares.  I used a stitching tool to add markings just inside the edges of each square.  I was nervous about things drying too much to do them at the end, but I could have waited.  In fact, I ended up going over them again later.

The squares were quite thin which was good.  They also weren't perfect so the corners and edges had to be squished together a bit.  I did use a fondant cutter to get them the same size, but as I was picking them up they always stretched a little bit.

This took quite a while.  I think I could have cut several squares at a time then put them on.  Leaving the stitching until last would have saved some time as well.  Where things really went south was when I tried to peel the quilt off the counter.  Around all the edges, I had let the squares hang over the white fondant.  That was a bad idea.  I also painted the little squares instead of the white fondant when I first started.  That was a bad idea.  Part of the quilt was glued to the counter.  I got it peeled up, but the edges were a little tattered.  I also discovered that this was a really big, heavy blanket.

I tried draping the blanket over the cake and ended up smashing the back of the cake.  The blanket was so heavy and big that it kept sliding off the back.  I took it off with only a little frosting coming off.  I think I would have been tempted to start over at this point with a much thinner piece of white fondant, but I really didn't have time for that. 

I'm surprised I wasn't in tears.  I contemplated just dying what fondant I had left yellow or green and rolling out a solid colored blanket.  I decided to try rolling the whole assembled blanket.  I put the colored side down and rolled as hard as I could.  It flattened out only slightly.  The color blocks were distorted a little, but really it didn't look too bad.  From there I took my knife and ruler and cut off a strip more than a half block wide from each side.

That helped to make the quilt a little more manageable, but not much.  I turned the blanket over and rolled a bit more, but the blocks were starting to separate.  At this point, I redid the stitching marks since they had distorted with the extra rolling.  I tried draping the blanket again, this time letting it cover most of the baby and patting it down to wrap around the baby's rump.  This seemed to help hold the blanket on.  From there I was able to bunch the blanket up so that it would rest on the cake stand.  Then I held my breath.  I really thought I was going to spend my evening in class dreaming up how to fix this mess. 

I put the cake in the fridge since I was worried about the weight of the blanket  and the soft frosting.  I'm not sure my fridge stayed very cold, becuase I was checking on it constantly - imagining the worst.  I thought for sure I would see the blanket peeled off the back, taking all the frosting with it. 

It stayed on!  This was one really heavy cake though.  It took about three pounds of fondant including the baby and the blanket.  It doesn't sound like so much now, but it weighed a ton. I was so relieved that it was staying together.  After cleaning up my counter a bit, I got daring enough to take it out of the fridge and attach the buttons.  I used a little dot of frosting to put a button at each intersection on theh quilt, even in the folds where I could get them.  There was also a strategic button leaned against one foot to cover the thin spot of fondant.

 

I wish I had stopped there.  My writing in general is terrible, and believe it or not, it is actually better on cake.  As you can see, it is not good.  I wrote, "Peek-A-Boo, Pink or Blue?"

I had a lot of leftover buttons and they were too cute to waste, so I lined the top of the ribbon with them.  You've probably heard the saying that you should leave off the last thing you want to put on.  In this case, it was true. The buttons made it seem quite cluttered.  In fact, the writing made the cake look messy too. I think I should have quit after putting the buttons on the blanket. 

All the stress that came with this cake was absolutely worth it.  I have never received so many compliments on a cake before, nor have I done a cake that I am so proud of.  I have done more elegant cakes that I loved, but I hadn't imagined I could make something so realistic. 

 

Not only did I love the cake, but the moment when Meredith and Jason cut into it and saw the pink filling was priceless.  They are going to make such wonderful parents and they will never forget sharing that moment with their family and friends.