Crissa's Cake Corner!: Elephant Baby Shower

My cousin was having an elephant-themed baby shower to celebrate the upcoming birth of their first child, and I was asked to make a cake, cupcakes and macarons for the event. Other than the flavours, theme and colour scheme, they left the rest up to me. Love it when clients let me have free reign :)

Elephant Baby Shower Cake

Having just done a pink elephant baby shower cake last month, I wanted to a different design this time. I was inspired by this Jelly Bunny cake and wanted to make an edible elephant topper that had the same hand-painted details in the ear folds. I used Edible Art Paint to paint the "flowers" on the elephant's ear folds. Love how cute she turned out!

cute l'il baby elephant topper

For the fondant B-A-B-Y building blocks, I used the handy dandy Rice Cube maker that I got from a friend for Christmas. So much quicker and easier than trying to make fondant cubes using fondant smoothers!

Rice cube makes fondant cubes in a flash!

I made all the fondant decorations for the cake even before I had baked the cake! Definitely makes things easier come assembly time!

Earl Grey tea infused chiffon cake batter

Now for the cake itself, it was an earl grey chiffon cake, filled with lavender Swiss meringue buttercream, a new flavour for me! I sourced the culinary grade dried lavender from Gourmet Warehouse, steeping a few teaspoons of it in whipping cream before blending it up and adding it to the buttercream. I love the light, floral flavours of this cake combo! Very classy.

Lavender-Earl Grey buttercream filling

The cake was frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream, tinted a light pink, with a white chocolate ganache drip. I had a tricky time getting the consistency of the ganache right, and actually had to "wipe it all off" the first time, re-smooth the buttercream, and apply the drip again. Still not quite happy with how the drip came out though. Sighs.

"It's a Girl!"

Along with the fondant elephant topper and the building blocks, the cake was decorated with fresh blooms in shades of pink, meringue kisses, pink and white macarons and touches of edible gold leaf. I added a fondant name plaque with gold fancy lettering to finish the cake off.

cake all dressed and ready to party

The cupcakes were mango chiffon, filled with fresh mango whipped cream, and chunks of sweet fresh mangoes, and chocolate cupcakes, filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache.

mango chiffon cupcakes, fresh outta the oven

filling time

sweet, juicy, fresh mango filling

Both flavours were frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream, swirled in shades of pink and decorated with pink pearl dragees and white nonpareil sprinkles.

frosted and ready to party

gooey whipped dark chocolate ganache filling

The macarons were supposed to be regular round macarons, in pink and grey, but I couldn't help but make them into cute baby elephant shapes instead. #maximumeffort lol.

baby elephant macarons

They were straight-forward to pipe cuz each macaron was just one colour. I didn't have to wait in between piping the colours, as with other character macarons.

pink and grey elephant macarons

Once they were baked and cooled, I stuck on upside down fondant hearts for the ears and drew eyes on with a black edible ink marker.

earl grey white chocolate ganache filling

The grey macarons were filled with earl grey white chocolate ganache. The pink macarons were filled with a lychee-rose filling: a dam of rose-scented Swiss meringue buttercream, and lychee fruit pulp sandwiched in lychee cream in the centre!

lychee-rose & earl grey white chocolate ganache macarons

too cute to eat!

The baby shower was held at Creme de la Crumb downtown. My cousin and his siblings did a pretty nice job decorating the place. I loved the huge ombré balloon bouquet, complete with floating baby elephant!