We’ve been waiting for a few weeks to share this cake because we wanted the professional pictures by Inked Fingers first, so we could do it—and this epic baby shower, yes BABY SHOWER—justice for how amazing it was! This one was an adventure!  

The theme of the shower is ‘Oh the Places She’ll Go!’ with a hot air balloon Dr. Suess theme. It was held at the stunning Camp Lucy, in the pavilion next to Ian’s Chapel, that is a historical pavilion moved from Vietnam & rebuilt on the site.

LOOK at the main backdrop framed with balloons from The Balloon Collective!

And that was just the beginning of the magical things at this amazing shower! Planned to PERFECTION by Yellow Umbrella Events, & Cheryl absolutely knocked it out of the park! There were aerialists; acrobats in big bubbles; beverage burros, & a champagne wall where you ring a bell & a hand reaches through a magical ‘mirror’ with a glass of champagne for you! (Why do I not have one of those at MY house??? I would ring the bell more often than Pavlov’s dog, but I digress………)

Photos by Inked Fingers:

The mother-to-be wanted us to create the balloon from the shower invitation, which featured balloon illustrations similar to the original book. The original balloons in the book had horizontal stripes, but the invitation balloon had vertical stripes. The wacky proportions of Suess’s illustrations are hard to replicate in real life! Since we needed the basket of the balloon to be a cake to serve around 40, that meant the balloon itself had to be super tall to even be close to the proportions by Suess. When I had it custom made by Ace Foam (they are awesome) in San Antonio, they HAD to change the proportions to even make it physically work. Later, this becomes important as it was still really TALL, lol.

We used modeling chocolate to cover the balloon and it took two people to handle the huge pieces needed to make the stripes. Just the sheer size & the weird curve & shape made it REALLY difficult to cover. This was one of the most difficult cakes to execute that I’ve ever done. Originally, I had planned to use a clear tube to support the balloon so it would appear to be floating & have an almost invisible center support. Well, that didn’t happen. Even though it was styrofoam, the weight of the balloon was far too much. And that was before coating it in 20 pounds of modeling chocolate! I ended up having to use a heavy steel rod that extended 2/3 of the way up into the balloon as well. The invisible support would totally work on a smaller cake!

Well, even though I measured as best I could with the weird shape, and ‘thought’ the cake would fit in my van, I missed it by a couple inches. So we had to rent an emergency UHaul at the very last minute to deliver it! (The best-laid plans of mice, men, and cake artists🤣) It’s a very curvy road to Camp Lucy, so Casper had to sit in the back & protect it, just in case, as that balloon was top-heavy! It was right at 4 feet tall overall. And when we got there, we had to carry it a LONG way from the driveway across the lawn, & everyone just stopped & cheered as we carefully carried this big thing to the pavilion.

Vika made all the little animals ‘holding down’ the balloon, which are all the fur babies owned & loved by the mama-to-be! 4 miniature horses, a pig, & 2 doggies, plus the stack of suitcases from the invitation was made by Casper. I carved the basket from cake & made the cake board with the signature Suess landscape color stripes.

The basket of the balloon was Caramel Apple cake with our signature Browned Butter Buttercream filling. It’s by far our most popular filling! On the invitation, instead of looking like a normal hot air balloon basket, it looks more like a sock, & it’s asymmetrical like it’s blowing in the wind. I tried to emulate that, & until I got all the details on it, it looked more like Winnie the Pooh’s hunny pot, lol.

We also made a few dozen of our Cake Parfaits in regular Tres Leches cake and Bailey’s Tres Leches cake. We call those Tres Libations cakes, lol. We use a yummy liqueur, like the Bailey’s, in place of part of the plain milk so it’s a deliciously boozy treat. I was blown away when we later saw how our parfaits were served! IT’S A FLAMINGO LADY WEARING A TABLE! Hahahaha! Check this OUT! All the coolness of this & the acrobats are from Artisan Oddities.

This was certainly one of the most challenging cakes we’ve ever done, but was so much fun & worth it in the end. Big huge thanks to Cheryl Bailey of Yellow Umbrella Events for trusting us with a project of this magnitude.

And remember, “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose!” –Dr. Suess