Kristen's Baby Shower Cake

My best friend, D, recently asked me to make the baby shower cake for her sister-in-law, Kristen.  Of course I was incredibly excited to do it!

Kristen's mom had chosen a book theme, and had found some adorable baby shower decorations with a Dr. Suess theme.

I had an awesome open book cake pan that Becky and Linda had gifted me a few years ago, and I was excited to get to use it!  I did two layers, one in the book cake pan, and another flat layer in your standard 1/4 sheet cake pan.

The cake was an awesome fudgy chocolate with ganache in between the layers.  Then I iced the whole thing with vanilla italian buttercream.

I wanted it to look like the book was coming to life (not in a creepy way), so I made each fish progressively more 3D.  Becky and Linda were kind enough to let me use their kitchen again, and Becky made those fabulous green fish!

We used a 50/50 mix of gum paste and fondant for the red fish and the mom and baby fish.  It was a little bit of a challenge modeling something 3D after a 2D image, but it turned out to be a lot of fun and was pretty cute in the end.

My oh-so-artsy Instagram shot of the cake