Vishu themed Cake | Baby's naming ceremony | Traditional Kerala style design

The last themed cake I make was back in August 2015. Yes! It's true...I don't think I have shared that cake here yet either...meh! The whole time I excused myself from any fancy cake stuff in the excuse of being pregnant, then due to our move to Charlotte,  all of my 'cake stuff' were packed away into dozens of boxes and then our newborn came along etc etc

Anyways not going to dwell in the past, so here I'm sharing my latest cake , thanks to some awesome friends who trusted me to the core on everything from flavor to design. Our friends S and S had had their third baby boy in March and they planned to have a fun get-together with close friends and family on April 14th to celebrate the baby's naming ceremony which happens when the baby is 28 days old. April 14th also happened to be the day of Vishu festival, which is a popular harvest festival for folks from the state of God's Own Country, Kerala .

As it was Vishu festival and also the naming ceremony (aka, Iruvathiettukettu in malayalam) I decided to go for a traditional look which will depict both the festival as well as signify the baby's special occasion.

One of the most popular arrangements done for Vishu, other than a scrumptious vegetarian feast (sadhya), is the VishuKani. The Malayalam word kani means 'that which is seen first', so Vishukkani means 'that which is seen first on Vishu'. The Vishu kani arrangements usually consists of a tray or golden bowl, Uruli filled with various vegetables and fruits, a mirror, ornaments, new dress and most popularly, yellow Konna flowers along with a Lamp and the photo of a Hindu god.
I used a random image of a Vishukani from google  and re-created the look using gumpaste and this is what it looked like. I was lucky enough to find the yellow flowers at a local art&craft store that perfectly resembled the yellow Konna flowers. Except for the flowers all other VishuKani items are made from gumpaste and edible.

To signify the baby's naming ceremony function, I decided to make a cute little sleeping baby figurine and a tray filled with the various ornaments that we would adorn the baby for the first time after he/she is born which generally includes a Gold waist chain, Gold baby bangles and anklets, Black thread worn around the waist and black bangles (karivala).  Again all items are made from gumpaste and edible.

Here's another look at the Tray of ornaments and Vishu kani arrangement.

For the overall deisgn on the cake I went for the Kerala Set Sari/Mundu design which is ideally a cream/ivory colored cloth with gold border.

When I took it my friend's home, they wanted to display it along with some traditional Lamps, statue of baby Krishna and also their Vishu kani tray. Here are some pics taken by my friend himself. 

That's me with my little Mihika baby. It was her very first Vishu and we are wearing traditional Kerala style Set sari and pattupavada respectively and coincidentally our colors matched - Orange. Anyways, I'm digressing from the actual topic... the Cake ;-)

The cake flavor was White Cake with a filling of Mango mousse, pieces of mango and peach with vanilla Buttercream frosting on the outside.  I didn't get a picture of the sliced cake but it'll look exactly like the cake slice from this cake.

Everyone was thrilled to see the cake and had never seen a traditional Kerala theme depicted on a cake. I was thrilled to be able to successfully deliver the design I had in mind and anyone from Kerala could relate to it without even explaining the theme.

Although not entirely perfect I was very happy with how the cake came out. Buttercream frosting is not my favorite when trying to get smooth and clean sides but I did not have the time to do a fondant cake. Maybe next time... ;-)
Hope you enjoyed this cake as much as I did from making to blogging about it. So until next time all I have to say is do what you love doing and see you all soon!

-Manju

Jungle Animals themed Cake

I'm so excited to share my first cake this New Year....a super fun, extremely cute and bright Jungle Animals themed tiered cake. Ridhaan's mom is my very good friend and she had asked me to do his birthday cake many months before. Although I wasn't sure if I would be able to make it (due to some other matters) I finally decided to go ahead. Her only request was for a Mango Mousse filling and some animals to go on the cake to match with the Animal themed birthday party she had in mine. Rest all was left to me and sky was the limit....

I'm proud of this cake for several reasons.

(a) This is my first non-fondant tiered cake with a smooth fondant-like finish. It took a lot of time to get the sides smooth and edges straight but it was worth it. There were some imperfections but let's say I decorated over them...hehe :-P These are very important factors in the word of beautiful cakes so it mattered a lot to me as well and I'm glad it worked well.

(b) This was my first tiered cake with a creamy Mousse filling. Mousse fillings are generally very soft and people don't recommend them for tiered cakes or even for cakes that need to sit out for a long time. But I tried it and it worked fine. Maybe I should thank the freezing temperatures here in Minnesota for that!

(c) My first cake with actual sugar figurines that you can eat! :-D

The Cakes were Vanilla White Cake with creamy Mango Mousse Filling covered with color tinted Vanilla Buttercream with marshmallow fondant accents for decoration and figurines. 

Until now I've never really tried making edible figurines, except for the Clowns I made for Lil'Appu's 1st Birthday Cake. Usually I just keep a plastic toy topper or a themed candle topper and just decorate the rest of the cake. But this time I felt with the animal theme it would be great to have some cute looking animals on the cake, so I went ahead with making them.

I made a Giraffe, Zebra, Elephant and Lion. I wish I had made the giraffe neck longer, but other than that I was happy with the rest of the animal figurines. These were made almost a week in advance and they hardened perfectly. 

My son used to come back daily from daycare and go stare at the animals...he just loved them. He is so used to me making cakes for friends that he doesn't touch or disturb my 'cake stuff' and for some reason he thinks he can go for the party anyways and eat the cake and decorations there (which is usually true)...so after the cake is cut its a whole different story, he wants everything first ;-D 

He kept requesting that I make a Monkey as well and I told him we'll make one directly on the cake. I don't know if he understood, but he kept waiting for the monkey every single day :)

The Tree toppers were a last minute addition. After I placed the animals on the cake with the Lion on top I just felt it needed something more...I thought about placing a Sun, but then the colors of the Lion and sun would be almost same (yellow-orange) , so finally decided to place the same trees that I had placed around the cake. Well, you can call them Coconut trees although the leaves should have been longer ;-) It's all in the imagination....hehe! If you notice I even gave small scale like texture to the stem of the tree to give it a proper 3D tree look. I decorated the cake board with chocolate buttercream to give it a muddy ground like appearance and it looked pretty good.

Then there were vines, some grass, more leaves, coconut trees and flowers to complete the overall look of the cake. I wanted the Monkey to be hanging from the tail on a vine and that's how I did it.

My fun animals :)

My friend had already bought the candle that would go on the cake so we placed that at the venue. Here are some pics of the beautiful Cake Table and cake cutting :)

Here's how the cake slice looked like! It really was yumm if I may say so.....ahem!

I'm still waiting for some more pics that the photographer at the party had taken....I'm sure my friend is waiting for those more than me :-P 

The party was super fun, the decorations were perfect and colorful and the food was awesome and not to mention how lovely the cake was...hehe! 

Lil'Ridhaan happily ate up the sugar Elephant and lil'Appu went for the Lion, but I don't have pics of any of that...hopefully the photographer took some :)

Will share more fun cake stories in upcoming posts...until then take care and bye bye!

-Manju