This is a cake that I created for a baby Shower, I always love to do cakes that are not seen everyday. I will give the directions so that if anyone else would like to create this cake you will know how I did it, then you can add your own little touches.
Items needed to create your own Sculpted Baby Book Cake
A baked cake in any size that you choose
White Fondant and any other color of your choice
Pizza Cutter or a Knife
Cookie Cutters Letters or whatever kind you may already have on hand
Fondant Smoother
2 spatulas
corn starch or powder sugar to dust your work surface when rolling out the fondant
As for the cake itself I used an11 x 15 sheetcake cut in half then stacked to get the desired thickness I needed. However if you don’t have that size pan available you could always use a regular baking pan that you may have already, most people have a 9 x 11 baking pan that they bake cakes in. That size could be used, then cut in half and stack those pieces together to give you a nice thickness for a book shape, you may want to trim the sides to come up with a shape that works for you. it may help to look at the shape of a medium sized book you have and recreate the size and shape of that.
The next step is to cover the cake in an icing of your choice, then you need to cover with white fondant.
Use the pizza cutter or knife to imprint lines very close together on 3 sides of the cake to give you the look of pages in a book, don’t push too hard though or you will end up with holes in your fondant.
Next you will need to roll out enough fondant in a square shape to make the cover of the book. It’s really important to put down plenty of corn starch or powder sugar when rolling out the fondant because you wil need to wrap part of the fondant over the cake. Next I used 2 spatulas to pick up the cake and place it on top of the fondant square, place the cake about an inch from the right edge of the fondant. Then you will need to carefully pick up the left side of the fondant and lay it over top of the cake to complete the cover of the book, if you have too much fondant hanging over then you can always trim it to be equal to the bottom part of the cover.
Use a fondant smoother to smooth out the fondant on the top of your book cake, then use it to create a spine edge on the top edge of the cake, by looking at my cake picture you can see where exactly to do this. I then left the right corner of my fondant flipped up to add detail to the book.
I used cookie cutter letters to cut out the word baby for the spine of the book, you could use whatever cookie cutter shapes you may have on hand if you do not have letters, such as maybe a flower, a rattle, a star, a heart. It’s your cake so personalize to your liking it doesn’t have to be for a baby shower, you could do a book for a graduate, a gardening book, or someones favorite book. The ideas are limitless as to what kind of book you can create.
The baby I have on top was sculpted out of gumpaste, however if you are not able to do that then use a your cookie cutters to cut out a shape of something you like and place on the top. Another good idea is using the edible markers that are on the market and available at most stores, I bought a set at my local grocey store in the cake isle. You could write whatever you would like on the top of the book which would give you a differnt effect.
If you have any questions along the way should you decide to create a book cake just drop me an email and I will get back to you. If you do a book cake be sure to email me a picture I would love to see your creation, until next time happy creating!!
