Wild About Baby

This next baby shower "project" started off with a few crazy ideas. My close friend, who was making the invitations and decor for another friend's girly zoo themed baby shower, wanted a big tree cake centerpiece with monkeys hanging from it, animal face cupcake toppers, and decorated sugar cookies as favors. Unfortunately due to time constraints, budget, and level of difficulty involved, we decided to play up the animal prints and leave the cute animals to the paper embellishments.

For the cupcake toppers - I found animal print edible cupcake tattoos from Chef Duff's line of products sold at Michael's Craft Stores. Instead of placing them directly on the icing, I adhered them to white fondant discs and placed them on top of colorful fondant flowers.

I baked vanilla cupcakes in coordinating leopard and zebra print cupcake liners, iced them in vanilla buttercream, and added the fondant animal blossom toppers.

Here's another view from the top. They kind of look like mini animal print plants [or something].

I needed to make 60 cupcakes so I made some covered in sugar for those that don't like to eat fondant. I swirled the buttercream icing onto the cupcakes and dipped them in a bowl of pink sugar crystals, creating a nice smooth surface.

The centerpiece was a simple 6" round cake covered in white fondant with purple fondant blossoms and a pink fondant banner around the top. I used Wilton edible sheets in zebra print to add a border to the bottom of the cake.

The cupcakes were arranged on a tower and we used the cake centerpiece to display a couple of extra cupcakes on it's flat top. The table also held some black and white swirl lollipops with custom labels and colored curling ribbon.

The baby shower decor was so cute, my friend did a really great job, the food was delicious and people were dancing to the DJ by the end of the day! Certainly no one missed the big carved jungle tree cake... maybe I'll attempt it some other time.