Baby Shower Cake - Jungle

Gotta love babies... especially the baby showers. I love the decorations, the food, chatting with the ladies... I love it all. This last shower that I threw I decided that I was going to step it up a notch and make my first baby shower cake. I was really surprised how easy it was to do. Seriously, this is my first cake!

I simply used box mixes, but instead of cooking them in circle pans, I cooked them in Cheesecake Pans to help that be perfectly even, plus they cool faster since you can take the side off while they cool. I used a Buttercream frosting too (for the first ti

me) and again... SUPER EASY! :)

All it was is...

Shorting 1/2 cup

Butter 1/2 cup (1 stick)

Powder Sugar 4 Cups (add one as a time)

Vanilla 1 tsp (clear vanilla if you want it to be white)

Milk 2 TBS

I doubled the frosting for this cake and it was plenty.

Mix shorting, butter (soften), vanilla till cream. Then add sugar one

cup at a time. The frosting will be a little stiff at this point, so now you will add the milk... this will make it the perfect medium stiffness. If you want to add color to the frosting... DO NOT ADD LIQUID DIE. It will ruin the stiffness... use coloring paste. They sell it a Walmart or Michaels and such.

What is great about this frosting is that you don't have to refrigerate it. So, you can start working on a cake a couple days in advance and it will still be great. In fact, I like the frosting to sit out and get a little more stiff after the cake is frosted.

Once you have the cake frosted you can then decorate it how you please. I used Candy Melts to make the leafs. I simply melted some green candy melts and drew them on wax paper with a picture of the leaf below. Once cooled, you peel them up a

nd glue them on (with more melted candy). They will stay really well.

The animals on top, I used my Cricut to cut out cute little animals. I cut them out and glued tooth picks to them, that helped me stick them on top.

The sides I decorated with the candy melts again. I simple grabbed some extra Candy Melts and glued them to the sides with melted Candy Melts.

I had a lot of fun with this cake and it tasted fantastic! I used a couple tools that helped make it easier to do things.

A cake lifter really helped me move the cakes from the pans

to the tray I was serving it on. Truly helpful. Also, a flat spatula made it possible to evenly spread the frosting through out the cake.