Baby Celebration Cake

Since my babies like to arrive earlier than expected, I’ve never had a baby shower.  I jinxed myself during my last pregnancy by having a morning tea to celebrate 31 weeks (the longest I have ever been pregnant!) – I was then admitted to hospital 5 days later and Aiden arrived a few days after that!

When my sister said she didn’t want a baby shower, I was a little disappointed, but respected her decision.  I did still want to do something special for her.  She has been amazing over the past couple of years, dropping everything to fly up and help us out when I’ve been pregnant/in hospital, and I was looking forward to having an opportunity to repay some of the massive debt we owe her.  It’s quite likely her little bub will be arriving a few weeks earlier than expected, so we took the opportunity to arrange a surprise family lunch for her this weekend.

As with any kind of celebration, it’s not complete without a cake and I was keen to try something new.  I’ve always thought rainbow cakes look impressive, and to go with the baby theme I thought pink and blue layers (she hasn’t found out what she is having – much to my frustration!) would look good.

I was really happy with how this rainbow baby shower cake turned out. I was a little worried about how I was going to put it together, but it was surprisingly easy.  I kept the decorations simple and just used smarties (only needed 2 bags to get enough pink and blue ones), but you could jazz this up as much as you want.

Loving the layers

Butter Cake – The below recipe makes one cake.  You will need two of these for a four layered cake as pictured- recipe is from Donna Hay Modern Classics 2.

Print Recipe

0 from 0 votes

Baby Celebration Cake

Prep Time40 mins

Cook Time1 hr 5 mins

Total Time1 hr 45 mins

Course: Cakes

Servings: 12

Author: Lauren

Ingredients

• 125 g butter softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup cater sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups plain flour - sifted
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder - sifted
• 1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda - sifted
• 1/2 cup milk
• Pink and Blue food dye

Instructions

• Preheat over to 150 degrees
• Place all ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat on low speed until combined
• Add a few drops of food dye until you have desired colour
• Increase the speed to high and beat until just smooth
• Grease a 20cm round tin and line with non stick baking paper, spoon mixture into tin and bake for 1 hour and 5 minutes
• Allow to cool for 5 minutes then turn onto a wire rack

Buttercream

500g butter – softened (I use Lurpak butter, it’s a bit pricer but the colour is much better)

6 1/2 cups of icing sugar – sifted

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

• Beat butter in the bowl of an electric mixer until smooth and creamy
• Add vanilla to butter mixture and beat well
• Gradually add sifted icing sugar, and beat until well combined
• Slice cakes in half once completely cooled.

• Place one layer on serving plate, add even layer of buttercream, repeat until all layers of cake are stacked together – I find it easiest to use a pallet knife to do this
• Spread remaining buttercream around outside and on top of cake
• Decorate as desired

Linking up with The Multitasking Mummy for Mummy Mondays