Baby Dedication Cake

It was an honor to be part of a handsome baby boy's dedication ceremony over the weekend. The ceremony was filled with songs and words from the hearts of blessed and wonderful parents and the community that will help raise this child in the way of the Lord. Oh, it was really beautiful!

The mom of this adorable little boy joined me in the kitchen to bake the cakes; that made the experience extra special! And I also took the opportunity to learn some baking tricks from her! Awesome!!!!!

Let's get to Baking!

The recipe yielded two 8 inch round cakes. We also made another batch of the recipe, adding in chocolate powder to make chocolate cakes. This time around it yielded three 6 inch round cakes. 

The cakes were torted using a cake leveler.  A serrated knife/spatula can also be used, but this tool require more practice and patience so I've opted for the leveler. After, the cakes were filled with butter cream filling and crumb coated. The crumb coated cake should be left in the fridge for about 30 minutes for the butter cream to set (it is set when the butter cream is solid to the touch). This prevents crumbs from getting into the final butter cream coating.

Now it is fondant time!!!! Yay!!! I love working with fondant!

This cake is made of two 8 inch layers and two 6 inch layers. The tiers should be worked on separately and then stacked at the end. It makes the process so much easier. Each tier was covered with blue pastel fondant. The colorful (white, green, blue, and orange) strips were put on the cake using the *parchment paper method. The panels were cut using a pasta cutter and then textured using a quilt wheel. The quilt wheel is a really useful tool that can bring life to many fondant/gum paste designs. The fabric mold was used to create the backdrop for the words 'God Bless' and for the borders over the panels. 

A beautiful lady was also celebrating her birthday so we also had a birthday cake made just for her. And it reads 'Happy Birthday' in French which is her native language. 

Lessons learned:

• Be extra, extra careful when removing the cake from the pan. I know we all know this but I mean really extra careful. The cake was crumbly and pieces of cake fell off when it was removed from the pan. Hand on mouth, what will I do now! Fear not, this can be fixed. First, the cake should be frozen to make it firm. Secondly, crumbs of cake can be mixed in with the buttercream and used to crumbcoat the cake paying special attention to the areas where the cake broke off.
• When coloring the fondant, always make more than you think that you would need and it helps to start working on the cake in advance especially for a cake that includes the side panels like this one. The panels did require a lot of special attention, in order to make it uniform and to add the texture. Also, it includes several colors so that also requires more time.
• Always bring a kit with extra icing and tools to the event site to mend anything that may have gone wrong during travel. As you may notice, I didn't have additional borders for the top tier. The cake was assembled on site and I hadn't brought any extra borders with me.
• When adding cocoa powder to a recipe, subtract the equivalent amount of flour or add milk to loosen the batter to prevent it from being too heavy.
• *parchment paper method - cut a strip of parchment paper to fit the height of the cake, spread shortening on the paper, place the fondant panels on the paper face down, use edible glue or moistened the area of cake with a small amount of water, place the panels on the cake, smooth with a fondant smoother or the palm of your hand, and then carefully pull away the paper. Voila!
• square cutters would be good to make the baby blocks. I will get some for next time!

The parents and guest loved the cake and that's what matters at the end! It was so much fun putting this cake together.

Don't forget to share pics of your edible 'kreations'. Till next time, "Happy Baking!"

I look forward to reading your comments!