Babee Shower Cake
Whether for a baby shower or baby's first birthday, this buzzworthy cake is the bee's knees. On the inside is a delightful honey cake, which is simply decorated with honey buttercream frosting to look like a beehive. A wonderful confection for a mommy to be!
Yield: Makes one 6-inch three layer cake
Things you'll need
Ingredients- Fondant: yellow, black and white
- 2 1/2 cups plus 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
- 2 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 12 tbsp (1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar
- 3/4 cup honey
- 3 large eggs
- 4 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup whole milk
Decorations
- Buttercream Frosting
- Food coloring: yellow and black
- Black FoodWriter pen
Equipment
- Small (1/16-inch0 teardrop cookie cutter)
- Decorating tips: #809, two #12
Let's get started!
Fondant Prep
- Work with fondant on wax paper sprinkled with powdered sugar.
- For the bee bodies, roll the yellow fondant into 1 inch oval balls. Roll out the black fondant to 1/8 inch thick and cut out strips 1/8 inch wide and 3 inches long. Attach to the bee bodies using water.
- For the wings, roll out the white fondant to 1/8 inch thick and cut out small teardrops with the teardrop cookie cutter. Once hardened attach 2 wings to each bee body.
- Draw eyes and eyelashes on each bee with a black FoodWriter pen.
- Set aside to harden.
Let's get started!
- Preheat the oven to 350F. Line the bottoms of three 6-inch round cake pans with rounds of parchment paper and heavily grease the paper.
- Make the honey cake: In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
- In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, beat the butter, sugar and honey until light and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes.
- Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Beat in the vanilla.
- On low speed, alternate adding the flour mixture and the milk to the butter mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.
- Divide the batter evenly among the prepared pans and bake until a wooden pick inserted into the center comes out clean, 45 to 60 minutes.
- Let cool in the pans for 15 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
- Level off the tops of 2 cakes with a cake leveler or a large serrated knife; leave the third cake unleveled.
Time to decorate!
- Scoop 1/4 cup of the frosting into a small bowl and tint black, then scoop into a decorating bag fitted with a #12 tip. Tint the remaining frosting yellow and scoop a small amount into a decorating bag fitted with a #12 tip for step 8. Scoop the remaining yellow frosting into a decorating bag fitted with a #809 tip (you may have to refill it, depending on the size of your decorating bag).
- Stack the cakes with thin layers of yellow buttercream frosting in between the layers and the unleveled cake on top.
- Freeze the cake for 15 minutes to harden.
- Using a serrated knife, carve the cake into a beehive shape.
- Crumb coat the cake with a thin layer of frosting. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Pipe a door with black frosting.
- Pipe horizontal stripes of yellow frosting around the cake, starting from the bottom and working to the top, making a beehive texture.
- Using the decorating bag fitted with a #12 tip, pipe a border around the doorway.
- Place the bees on the cake.
Written By Rosanna Pansino
