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The cake at any social setting is more than just food. Cake decorating has become an art, and a baby shower cake has to be just as memorable as a wedding cake or a birthday cake. Depending on what kind of shower you’re throwing, one can choose a variety of cakes that would be appropriate at all kinds of showers – from the cutesy traditional shower, complete with prop bottles and pacifiers, to the ultra-mod sophisticated affairs today that often differ little from cocktail parties. The important thing to remember is that the baby shower cake has to reflect your party’s tone and theme, and it has to be memorable.

Going Old School: Just Because It’s Traditional, It Doesn’t Have to Be Cliché

Traditional baby showers have often become punch lines. The storks, baby dolls and the blue or pink décor has often elicited groans and gags as much as coos and ahs. Having a traditional baby shower, doesn’t mean you have to overdose on the cutesy saccharine and turn your party into a Shirley Temple-nightmare. A good baby shower cake idea if you choose to be more literal in your theme, is to have a bundt or pound cake decorated as a baby’s bottle. Another popular baby shower cake is gift-shaped (a perennial entry in cake-decorating competitions). A regrettable decision some make is to have the cake shaped like a baby – needless to say that this option is gruesome and should be avoided (would you want to ask one of your guests, “would you like the foot or the baby’s knee?)

It’s a Baby Shower for Adults

Most of the women I know, do not like cutesy baby showers, and roll their eyes at the multi-layered concoctions that make the prospective mothers often order. Having a modern baby shower means having a modern baby shower cake. That doesn’t mean it has to be staid or boring. An elegant fruit tart is a great idea, or individual cakes is another option to go for – the individual cakes can have pink or blue icing if you want a subtle hint of the popular baby shower idea. A sheet cake is also a great option, because not only are they terribly easy to decorate, but they’re huge and inexpensive, and can feed lots of people (in case your friends bring their husbands and children along). Whatever baby shower cake you choose, remember not to go to any extreme – making the cake too Disney-like and people will think you’re infantile, but making the cake to nondescript will have your guests question your maternal instincts.