Let them eat cake!

Or, in the words of Donkey "What about cake?  Everybody loves cake!"

Just because an item has "cake" in its name does not mean it is something you would want to eat.  A cake of soap is on no one's list of favorite foods (especially if as a child you had a problem with back-talking and were frequently invited to literally wash your mouth out...).  Ditto the urinal cake, yellow cake uranium, and suet cakes.  But then there is the diaper cake, which has the redeeming quality of being adorable, which none of those other pseudo-cakes have:

My recent relocation was largely influenced by one of my friends, because a) she lives in the Dallas area; b) had an extra bedroom I could live in; and c) kept telling me I should move to Dallas and go to pastry school, and after endless repetition, any idea starts to sound like a good one.  For the purposes of this blog she has decided she would like to go by the name "Roommate."  And now that that has been explained, I can continue with the story.

This weekend, Roommate was hosting a baby shower for her cousin's wife.  Or, if we are being technical, which I am sure Roommate would appreciate as it makes things more entertaining, the shower was for her cousin's stepson's wife, or her step-second cousin-in-law.  Either way, Roommate loves her family, and she loves the idea of crafty things and baking things, even though she does not particularly care for the actual crafting and baking.  In her own words, she does not have the patience for making craft projects (at least, not by herself) and she cannot stand the way flour feels on her hands.  And this is where I come in, because as it just so happens, I enjoy doing all of those things.

Because Roommate's cousin and his wife decided not to find out the sex of their baby until it is born, most of their showers are planned for after the baby is born so they don't end up with a year's supply of gender-neutral outfits.  However, one thing that you can never have enough of and can get in either gender-neutral or gender-specific varieties is diapers.  So it was decided that Roommate would be hosting a diaper party (or as they call it down here, a diaper pounding), making a diaper cake, and serving cupcakes and punch.  In the end, we made the diaper cake together, I made the cupcakes and frosting, and Roommate helped me frost them, and everything was a major success.

Once again, we have Pinterest to thank for all of our inspirations.  Because of the baby gender surprise situation, the nursery colors were yellow, green, and orange, with giraffes and polka dots.  After looking for diaper cakes on Pinterest, I came across this Giraffe Safari Cake:

It is pretty cute on its own, but it is from a website that sells premade diaper cakes, so we decided to use it as our inspiration and then search for a diaper cake tutorial.  The tutorial from Hammer & Thread seemed to be pretty easy to follow, and their cakes were adorable (see the first picture) so that was the one we went with.  I am not going to repost the directions, but I will say that it is most definitely a two-person project, and you will want to use either wired ribbon (as they suggest) or ribbon that is patterned on both sides, because using a non-wired ribbon that has a pattern on one side and is white on the other side made making bows much more difficult than necessary.  Our diaper cake received the appropriate amount of oohs and aahs:

You may notice that the giraffe wood cutout is the exact same as the one used in the inspiration diaper cake.  It (plus the snake and zebra) came from Hobby Lobby, as did the ribbons, the stuffed giraffe and letter D (baby's last name) cake topper, the fabric covering the base, and the monkey and banana buttons used in the center of the bows.  The lion and elephant are rattles from IKEA.  The diapers are newborn (white) and size 1 (polka-dots) from Target.  Roommate suggested to mommy-to-be that she get some basic shadow box frames and cute scrapbook paper and use the wood cutout animals as nursery decoration (see, she likes the idea of crafts), and mommy-to-be loved that idea.

When we were planning the shower, it was mentioned that daddy-to-be wanted to come also.  It has been suggested by people who know him that he was maybe feeling a little left out, so we decided not only could he come, but that he should get a gift too, especially after we saw a Daddy Doody Kit on Pinterest:

And our version:

The D (stamped with "Daddy Doody Kit") was left over from the diaper cake (sold as a 2 pack, we painted them orange).  In the bucket, we included a pair of gloves, a pair of safety glasses, face masks, a pair of tongs (for removal), the leftover diapers from the cake, a package of wipes, diaper rash ointment, baby wash, baby washcloths (in their colors even!), the only package of onesies Target had that were distinctly unisex (black-and-white striped, white with black stars, and white with "just arrived" embroidered on it), and a bib that says "I love Daddy."  Other than the D and the ribbon bow, everything came from either Target or Lowes.  

For the shower itself, we had chocolate and white cupcakes (75 total...) frosted with vanilla buttercream, some of which we colored yellow, orange, and green.  Both types of cupcakes were excellent and equally well-liked.  There are no making-of pictures, and the recipes were followed exactly, so I will just give you the links to the recipes and this picture of the table:

Chocolate Cupcakes - without the raspberry preserves and whipped ganache - not the world's most intensely chocolate and overly rich cupcakes as advertised, and the lack of eggs concerned me until they were baked and eaten (the lack of eggs is okay), but very good

White Cupcakes  - fluffy, almost like angel food cake - the batter seemed overly sweet, but the cupcakes after baking were excellent

Vanilla Buttercream - "tastes like homemade frosting" - nothing special, but the flavor was good and it was very easy to make and decorate with.