Our wonderful friends are expecting to bring home little Shiloh any day now. I was very excited to make the baby shower cake for their family and friends. I was looking online for cute girl cake ideas and didn't come up with much until I saw this adorable owl theme. I decided to go with it since my little Clark's room has forest animals in it also and I really love owls. I thought it was a nice unusual animal but still cute for a girl-themed cake.
I used Rose Levy Beranbaum's mousseline recipe, it took one 11 cup batch and one more 5 cup batch on top of that and there was none to spare. I used the white chocolate mousseline recipe (and when I used white chocolate chips, they seized up and made for a gritty texture but this was OK) which I mixed sweetened shaved coconut into. I thought this was the best buttercream filling I've had in ages, I'd definitely do this again with the mousseline! I used the coconut filling for the bottom tier. For the top tier, I used mousseline mixed with raspberry preserves.
I used pink polka dotted ribbon to trim the cake and just used a frosting comb for the sides. I wasn't too pleased with the final smoothness of the cake but I really didn't have any more frosting to help me out with that. I tried out a new ready-made fondant from Sarah's Cake Supplies (which actually tastes good unlike the Wilton stuff!) and I made the separate colors for the owl the day before. I placed them on the cake then also, and left it all out overnight and everything was fine the next day.
Since Shiloh is from Ethiopia, I wanted to honor her heritage by bringing that into the cake design somehow. I decided to color the cake layers of the bottom tier into red, yellow, and green which matches the Ethiopian flag. I told Andrea and Jan that there was a surprise when you cut into the cake and everyone seemed to like that so I was happy I tried it out.
Very cute Anne - glad you had time to make the cake and do something other than work and be a mom :)
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