Bumble Bees

At my office, we're very lucky to be able to throw delightful showers for weddings and babies.  These generally aren't your typical, run of the mill, workplace parties that have some colored napkins and streamers.  These are elaborate, hand-made decorations, fancy cakes, don't worry about eating lunch because there's plenty of food type showers.  Our department was up to bat in September.  And while I did want very much to celebrate the dear, sweet friend who was expecting a precious little bundle of joy, I maybe also somewhere in the back of my mind didn't want to get shown up by the other departments (4 babies at our office this summer, so there was a lot of pressure).

We decided on a super-cute bumble bee theme.  And a coworker who knows about this pinteresting business made a super cute board (or whatever it's called) of ideas (you can read her blog here)  and I decided that we absolutely must have a beehive cake with little bumble bees flitting about, so I volunteered to make it.  This might have been a little shocking to some coworkers as I'm generally more of "why make something super complicated that may taste great when you can make something super easy that we KNOW tastes great" kind of a girl.  But as I've watched a whole two seasons Buddy and the Cake Boss crew on my instant Netflix, I figured I could handle this.

So first I made the lemon pound cake.  I made a double batch of the recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbook.  Umm...the first batch may have been the teensiest bit dry since I forgot to add the milk.  Whoops!  It made a sturdier base for all the bee hive business, right?  I used a regular cake round (8", 9" who knows?) and then I got crazy clever and pulled my "married people tupperware" (aka Pyrex) out of the cabinet to use as smaller rounds for the middle and top of the beehive.  The second batch was just going to be cupcakes to go around the cake (they had milk, so I just encouraged folks to eat those first, much easier to grab).

Here's a shot of my three layers after I started cutting and shaving them.  They may be the teensiest bit dry and dark because of that little milk issue.  Oh well.  Also, all photography is care of my phone, so you know, don't judge.  The fancy pyrex tupperware things worked awesome for the top two layers!!

Next I stacked and frosted (the frosting may be Betty Crocker from the can, but surely it's the same recipe as in her cookbook, right?).

Then I added some yellow food coloring and frosted the rest of the bee hive - ta da!!

Oh snap!  Apparently I used Pillsbury instead of Betty C!!  Caught on film (or digital camera thingy).  Must have been BOGO at Publix.

My next step was to beg and plead a crazy awesome coworker who knows all the fancy cooking things to maybe pretty, pretty please make little bumble cake balls.  She's totally the bomb and I would link to her blog here if she had one.

How awesome did that turn out!?!?  However, if I attempted this again, I would find a type of chocolate frosting to use where it wouldn't appear as if the entrance to the hive is melting off the face of the cake.

The whole shower was great, with lots of beautiful decorations and fun garden/bee themed items (note the EDIBLE dirt cake centerpieces in the back) and it was such a delight to shower a sweet friend with love during this time.

Please don't assume there will be many future step by step fancy baking things posts because this is probably the one time this decade I'll do something like this.  Do stay tuned for the super easy, crowd pleasing recipes I'll be sure to post, though!