when some friends of ours found out they were having a second baby and asked if i would make the gender reveal cake, i jumped at the chance. they were just having a little zoom/facetime reveal with family, so it was just going to be a six inch cake for them and their toddler, the soon to be big brother.
the thing that made this cake a little bit different from my usual was that they requested all natural food dyes (and even provided them), which are notoriously less vibrant, and in liquid form, can make the consistency of the dyed item more runny. have i mentioned that the friends are fellow western new york natives (and big bills fans)??
ok. so, i opened the little mystery envelope, revealing the gender (girl!!), and started baking. originally, i had the fantastic idea to dye the cake batter pink, but after adding a generous amount of red and not seeing any discernible color change, i was nervous that i was over mixing the batter and decided that only the frosting would be dyed.
of course, on the morning of the gender reveal event, i scrapped the (possibly over mixed and dense) cake that was already stacked, filled, and crumb coated and started over. i made all new cake layers and a BUNCH more cream cheese frosting (my family never minds this wasted expense and will always willingly help with finding the unused cakes a good home).
i had to add a lot of extra powdered sugar to offset the amount of dye needed to get a barely noticeable shade of pink and blue for the frosting. and even then, since cream cheese frosting is already gloopy, this frosting was extra gloopy. thankfully, the decorations requested would not be super affected, as long as i kept everything nice and chilled. anyways. here she is.
i am pretty happy with it. and i think it tasted good. (the first cake tasted pretty good and in theory this one should be better).
they were pretty happy with it, but i think it’s mostly because it revealed they were adding a girl to their posse.
ok. so here’s the bit about the unicorn cupcakes. at work on wednesday, teresa (the shop owner/boss) asked me if i could make cupcakes for her daughter’s school birthday party on friday. even though i had to babysit on thursday and had this other cake due on friday afternoon, i agreed. what was i thinking?
since she didn’t want anything too crazy, just delicious and fun, it wasn’t so bad. plus i had unicorn sprinkles already on hand that needed a good use and this was the perfect opportunity. so, i churned these out and had them up to the shop just in time, and they were a big hit. (and bonus, we had some leftovers, so combined with the rough draft of the gender reveal cake, we had a lot of cake this weekend).
These are so pretty!