Baby Group First Birthday

OCTOBER 2013

I saw a cute idea somewhere for a group baby cake - just had to wait until they turned 1 to make it.  I was really happy with how this one turned out.  So cute!

I started ages ago making the baby figures.  The idea was to replicate a group photo we took when they were about 7 months old.  I tried to match the colours to what they were wearing and also the poses (as much as I could).  There was one baby missing from the photo so I had to add him into the line-up.

I started with the bodies.  After I'd made a few I realised I was adding their arms a different way to usual and it didn't look as good, but it was too late to change now.  Oh well, I'm sure the babies will forgive me. I also made up little name blocks for each child, but I didn't mix enough of some colours so the blocks weren't all the same size.  Rookie mistake :-(

All lined up and ready for heads.  (I had to tell the Mums not to read anything into the head and body sizes if they were slighting bigger or smaller - this was not intentional)

Adding the heads was great.  It really brought the babies to life.  I didn't go too fancy, just some white fondant tinted with skin tone colouring, a small ball for a nose, eyes added with edible marker and mouth indented using a piping tip.  There are 3 babies with ethnic backgrounds and I didn't want to offend anyone by making them all white so I added a small amount of chocolate fondant to these heads just to add a subtle difference.

Three of the babies had hats on in the photo so I replicated them as well.  Just love the hat with ears!

So the babies were nearly finished!  I added hair using a garlic press.  It's really hard to create a blonde effect and I didn't want to go yellow so I used a skin coloured fondant.  The curls coming out from under the cap are a favourite :-)

The cake itself needed to be long enough for all 9 babies so I baked 2 rectangle cakes in vanilla and chocolate.  (Caroline's Sugar Art hire tins for $5) I cut these down the middle to create 2 cakes with 2 tiers.  I used Greens moist vanilla and chocolate cake packet mixes which were delicious - will be using them again.  I filled them with the icing from the packets.

FYI - there aren't any cake boards big enough for this size. I used some cardboard offcuts to put under the cake itself and had my husband cut down some cupboard backing we had lying around from a previous IKEA purchase for the presentation board.  Bit rough on the edges but did the job.

The cake was covered in a light green buttercream and had a green fondant strip to replicate the grass.  I was meant to use a textured roller before putting it onto the cake but I forgot.  I used my Wilton ribbon cutter and it worked perfectly.  I might just be getting the hang of that thing!

I used a grass piping tip and darker green icing to edge all around the cake and where the photo was going to stick out like a banner.

Last thing to do was to create some lettering.  I used FMM tappits in Fancy and added some glitter,  positioned it all in place and wallah....done.

I handed over the babies to the respective parents on the day :-)