This week I decided to take a slight detour from the Bake Off challenges due to a very special occasion. My boss, Gemma, is taking a few months off for maternity leave as a first-time mother! Seeing as it was a momentous occasion, I couldn’t let Gemma have any ordinary send off cake.

I originally found the idea for these a few months ago on Pinterest, and I had to give it a shot. I’d never worked with fondant before, so I was really setting myself up for a challenge. Add in the fact that I was doing this on a weeknight, it also made for a very late night. But the smile on Gemma’s face (and everyone else’s for that matter) was totally worth it!

The first thing to do when working with fondant is make sure that your cakes are completely cool. Then put a nice layer of buttercream on the top that will allow the fondant to adhere. Then, color your fondant using gel food coloring. If you add too much color, the consistency of the fondant will start to get gummy. If that happens, just work in a tiny bit of icing sugar to get it back to the right consistency. If it gets too dry, wet your finger tips and work the dough. Just try not to do either too much as it eventually will just wear out.

Then start to layer up the different pieces of your design. As you add pieces, you can get them to adhere by brushing with a small amount of water.

Just for laughs, I added in a few grumpy babies. I think they were some of my favorites. I also mixed it up by adding hair to a few of the girls, hats, or even pacifiers.

Gemma was leaving the baby’s gender as a surprise, so I made half of them boys and half of them girls. Interestingly, all the boy cakes got eaten first! Wonder what that means??

Congratulations Gemma and Chris!