Baking A Diaper Cake

When I first heard the term diaper cake, I was like, "diaper wha...???". And my first thought was, "Why would anyone make a cake in the shape of a diaper???" Mention "diaper" and I think "poop", "pee" and (god forbid) "leaking". The last thing I want to do is eat something that looks toxic.

Of course, I soon found out that you don't eat a diaper cake. You give it, yes sir-ree. And they are all the rage in the mothering world right now. I didn't know because they don't have those under the rock where I come from. 

So when my good friend got pregnant (we've known each other since we were 6... that's 29 20 years ago!), I knew straight away that I had to welcome her into this crazy world they call parenthood with a diaper cake. Never will her life be sane / normal / the same again. Hopefully the said diaper cake will get her so excited she'll forget that once she gives birth, there are no exchanges, and definitely no refunds.

So I trawled the internet and found the perfect diaper cake. Read : cheap and good. I pitched this idea to Funny Bee (who has also known Good Friend for like, forever) and she promptly said, "Since I am crazy and you are crazy and we have nothing else better to do... Let's make it!" And I said, "We are mad! Hokay!"

All this took place about 4 months into my friend's pregnancy. And what does that mean? It means, dear friends, that Funny Bee and I had 6 months to learn how to make a diaper cake. And what do we do? Of course, squat.

*sigh*

I soon came to realise that making a diaper cake consisted only of two parts. Part one was buying the ingredients. Part two was making The Darn Thing. Part one was easy and quite fun. Part two? Erm, excuse me... Need. To. Tighten. This. Loose. Screw. In. My. Head.

Fast forward to a week before Good Friend's due date. By this time, Funny Bee and I are shaking in our underpants, totally flummoxed by the gargantuan task ahead of us and preparing ourselves for the worst (i.e. presenting Good Friend with a plastic bag full of baby items that were supposed to be in a diaper cake). Each one of us had done the obligatory google search on diaper cakes, but nothing more than that. Funny Bee even found out that a cousin of hers MADE them to sell. Now, if only she lived in SINGAPORE! Grrr!

Finally, we decided to bite the bullet and just make The Darn Thing. No guts no glory, I say! So I found this video and gave everyone (we roped in another brave friend) strict instructions to literally, watch and learn. My morale was further boosted by another website that said I could make one in only 30 minutes. "Hokay!" I said to myself, "We're educated females. We're Singaporean. We can follow instructions. We can do this! Roar!"

And we did! *smug*

In 30 minutes 3 hours! *snort*

Looks simple enough right? Well, it took us about 1.5 hours of squabbling, rolling, unrolling, tying, squabbling, rolling, unrolling and squishing to get to this stage. That's the bottom tier and we've got a receiving blanket tied around it.

Why 1.5 hours? Well, let's just say we had grand plans that had to be scaled down. Our original base had like 20 rolled diapers in it. Too bad it was SQUARE! After much scratching of heads, we finally decided to be realistic and go with a 2-tier cake. And that meant that 35 of the 50 diapers didn't make it into the cake. Sorry fellas.

Presenting... our top tier! Another reason why it took us 3 hours to make The Darn Thing? We were so tickled by this we spent like 15 minutes taking pictures of it, and with it.

We wrapped the top tier in a onesie and a pair of pants to hide the diapers. As you can see, we went with a puppy theme and stuck with blues and browns. Yup, it's a boy. :)

We then filled the space between tiers with argyle babylegs in the same blue-brown combo and a set of travel-size toiletries for baby (diaper cream, shampoo, body wash, powder).

Finally, we added some toppers - a pair of baby socks, a stuffed toy-cum-blankie and a card. Ta-dah! Besides tears and sweat, it cost us about $97 for the entire cake, including leftovers (35 diapers, 1 onesie, 1 bath mitt, 1 babylegs). We probably could have gotten a nicer, professional-looking one for slightly less than that, but we had good quality stuff in ours. Plus, it was a ton of fun. ;)

I'm happy to report that Good Friend was very pleased and quite impressed with our efforts. Or at least, that's the impression she gave us!

Update : Good Friend has since given birth to a happy and healthy baby boy who, so far, is doing a pretty good job of turning her life upside down.