​I am in love with the simplicity of the beautiful baptism cake. The simple white fondant layers with only a few important details made the mother gasp with excitement and was shaking when she hugged me. I love great reactions to the cakes I make!

On the bottom of each tier was a small rope wrapped around twice, with a few faux succulent stems. Lastly, on the top of the cake was a beautiful white keepsake wooden cross and another succulent stem.

​The understated beauty of this cake puts a smile on my face and reminds me how beautiful and precious baptism are.

Who didn’t cry when Rafiki smeared his hands over his drawing of baby Simba? I talked about how nostalgic I got when I made these Lion King cakes in my last post, but I rewatched the movie since that post with Andrew and Jack (who had never seen it) and both of them loved it, and I still cried during that scene. Sigh.

​To create this individual birthday boy cake, I did the same dry brush technique, but instead of creating an ombre look I was trying to make the cake look like the branch from Rafiki's tree. I kept with the tan tones and added some bark details. I found an outline image of Simba and printed out on regular paper to trace onto the cake. I used a paintbrush with food colors mixed with a little water, that I lightly dried off with a paper towel to give it the chalky appearance as in the movie. I used a small detail paintbrush to make Simba’s face and a round paintbrush with a little red food coloring that was padded dry for the mark across the forehead. Lastly, I used a leaf piping tip to create some buttercream leaves along the bottom of the cake for a little more texture and color.

​The cake came out so awesome and looks like it was taken out of the scene in the movie!

This cake brought back a lot of childhood memories for me. I was obsessed with the Lion King or was it more with Johnathon Taylor Thomas who played young Simba, either way, I loved the Lion King. I knew all of the songs and happily sung them all the time, despite not being able to carry a tune to save my life. With the new live animation moving coming to theaters a later this month it doesn’t surprise me that there is has been a flourish of nostalgia for the original Lion King, heck even Target as jumped on the bandwagon with toys and shirts in sizes from newborn to adult.
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As amazingly awesome as this cake turned out it was surprisingly easy. Each tier was covered in white fondant, then I hand brushed on the sunrise and dusk ombre using food coloring, a little water, and a dry paintbrush. The technique came out so much better than I thought it would and looked like I airbrushed the layers. I added tan and green grass using a grass piping tip to hold the plastic figurines in place. To create the vines, I used a #3 piping tip and then a leaf tip to give it a little more detail. That’s it. Not much to this amazing cake, but the special birthday boy’s cake, now that is a different story…