Kirby's Baby Shower. (2004)

The wonderful ladies of the Slide Library commissioned this cake for a baby shower they were throwing for Kirby. They weren't specific about what they wanted, which was kinda nice, because it meant I could do what I wanted. My original plan was to do a stork theme, but I ultimately scrapped that idea when the teddy bear image popped into my head one evening while I was sketching ideas for the cake. Another trip to Fantes ensued, because I only had the big teddy bear pan, not the small one. Thanks, as always, to Jean and Ron at Fantes for their help!

For structural reasons, I went with all yellow cake, which is a lot more solid than chocolate. The bottom later is 8", and the top is 6". I used Earlene Moore's cream cheese butter cream recipe, which has become my icing of choice these days. The bear is covered in chocolate icing, which is basically just the buttercream recipe with cocoa added. I secured the teddy bear to the top of the cake with a bamboo skewer, since it had to survive the car ride to the library. (Thanks for driving, Ancil!)

The teddy bears on the side are just rolled fondant shaped in a press mold. (remember to dust the mold with cornstarch to prevent sticking--especially in this Philadelphia humidity!) I mixed brown food coloring with water and painted them. For the ears, I used a pink edible marker, and the dots on the eyes are black edible marker. I used fondant instead of gum paste for two reasons: 1) it's easier. 2) you can eat the fondant if you really want to. In retrospect, I should've thought about using chocopan, too, but I'm not sure it how much it would harden and retain it's shape. From a taste point of view, Chocopan would be the clear winner.

Problems: I wanted to do something really simple for this cake, because it was a baby cake. So I stuck to yellow and blue (it's a baby boy). It was...okay, i guess. But it really needed something more to bring it together, even with the teddy bears on the sides and top of the cake. Fortunately. I had just finished working on Brian's birthday cake, and I had several other colors already made, including a very nice pink. I added a few dots around the sides, and that seemed to do the trick wonderfully. Also, you can still see some of the guide holes I used to place the yellow stringwork around the egdes. Not a big deal, but it would have been prettier if they weren't so visible.