Goodbye Tummy Hello Mommy Cake

by Shawndra Manning
(Litchfield Park, AZ, USA)

Baby Belly Cake

I absolutely LOVE making baby belly cakes! I think they are just too cute, and they're relatively easy to make! The mommy will be so excited and think you slaved hours on it! ;)

To bake you will need to get the small ball pan. (For the boobs) and a large bowl that is oven safe. I got mine from IKEA, it's a very large metal mixing bowl. Just make sure it's big enough to look like a pregnant belly compared to the ball pans.

For this cake I used one box of chocolate cake mix and poured half into each half of the ball pan and baked about 40 minutes.

I mixed 4 white cake mixes and poured it all into the large bowl. I baked this about 90 minutes, just be sure to keep checking to see if it's done.

I went to the dollar store and bought 2 large thick poster boards. Taped them together and covered with foil to use as the cakeboard.

Once the cakes were completely cooled, I arranged the "boobs" toward the top of the cakeboard. (You could cut in half and fill them, but I did not)

I dirty iced them with buttercream. I took my skin colored fondant and covered each cake separately. Then pushed them together.

I rolled out my lavender fondant and laid over the boobs, just halfway up so that the top of the boobs still showed skin. So, it would look sort of like a tube top. Smooth out the way you'd like and cut off access around the base of the boobs.

I then put my belly on the cake board. Dirty iced and covered with the skin colored fondant. If the fondant doesn't go all the way down between belly and boobs, it's okay. You'll be putting the dress and bow over it so it won't show.

If you want a footprint like mine, make one out of fondant and stick onto the side of the belly with water.

Take the purple

fondant, roll out very thin. You will do the dress in 2 separate pieces so that it looks like it's open in the front so you can see the bare belly.

Lay the fondant on one side of the belly, the top on the top center of the belly right below the boobs. Do NOT wet this yet, you don't want it to stick! You want to measure how much fondant you need to cover just that half of the belly. Remove the fondant and cut what you need. Remember you'll be adding wrinkles so leave enough for that.

Again, lay the fondant wear you want it and using your fingers just add a few wrinkles into the fondant. Now, take a paintbrush with water and slip under the dress to wet it a little so it will stick to the belly.

Repeat for other side of dress. Remember to place the dress over the footprint, (wet the footprint with water first) and press the dress along the sides of the foot and toes so you can make out the footprint).

Make a bow out of fondant or gumpaste. I let my bow sit about 20 minutes, just long enough to start holding it's shape. In the meantime, make the tails of the bow and stick to the top of belly, just under the boobs with water. Place the bow on top and use cling wrap in the loops to keep their shape. I just did this overnight, by the next morning I could remove the cling wrap and the bow held it's shape perfectly.

If you'd like to do any decoration, like the polka dots in my pic, now is the time to do so. Get creative. You can do polka dots, hearts, pipe on swirls, anything you want!

If you'd like to add a tattoo on the belly, just roll your fondant very thin and cut the shape you want. The mommy of my cake had a butterfly tattoo on her belly so the butterfly worked perfect!