Make It Monday: Gender Reveal Cake

I have never done anything special for the reveal of a baby-to-be's gender.  We usually just told people after the ultrasound and that was it.  Then a friend of ours had a special get together for her family when they announced the gender of their soon-to-be (they have now arrived) twins.  She had 2 cakes made with the filling in the middle tinted to match each baby's gender.  I immediately fell in love with the idea, but was unsure how my family would feel about me having a special get together just for the reveal.  Our ultrasound ended up being a few weeks before my eldest daughter's birthday and she liked the idea of us using her birthday cake to reveal our baby-to-be's gender.  Originally, I was going to just go ahead and make a cake with the filling tinted like our friend did, but then came across a fun cake on Pinterest, from the Unique Party Food To Go blog, and it inspired me to do something similar.  My daughter had the option of slicing the first piece and being the one to make the reveal, but she decided to pass the honor on to my mom, who passed the honor to my grandmother.  Here are some pictures of that first slice:

We are having a boy!

I made the cake using my daughter's Babycakes Cake Pop Maker.  We took a box of white cake mix and made it according to the directions on the box, except we split the prepared batter into 2 bowls and tinted one blue and one green (a girl would have been pink and purple).  We then baked them in the Babycakes Cake Pop Maker, for 3-4 minutes, but some of the balls were still brown on the outside.  In the future, we might reduce the baking side to closer to 3 minutes.  As the cake balls were baking, we then mixed up a box of lemon cake mix (you can use whatever flavor you choose, this was my daughter's choice).  I sprayed my bundt pan with non-stick cooking spray and then put about 1/3 of the lemon batter into the cake pan.  I topped that with the cake balls (I only used about 1/2 of the ones we made, the kids snacked on the rest).  I did not want any of the cake balls to peek through the outside of the cake, so I only did about 2 layers of cake balls.  Some of the cake balls were overfilled before baking, so we broke off the "wings" in order to ensure they looked round.  I then poured the rest of the lemon batter on top and baked at 350 for 35 minutes (or whatever your box/recipe says for a bundt cake).  We had originally planned to glaze the cake, but despite my efforts, some of the cake balls were peeking through the cake, so we decided to whip up some cream cheese frosting so that no one would get a sneak peek ahead of time.  I then decorated it for my daughter's birthday.  If I were to make this for a party that was exclusively a gender reveal, I would decorate with a mixture of pastel sprinkles and baby-themed decorations.  This would also be fun for a baby shower, or even a bridal shower, using the colors that the guest-of-honor has chosen for the nursery, or wedding.

Have any of you done something fun to reveal the gender of a baby-to-be?  Please share with a comment.

PS- A special thank you to my sister, Jessica, for the photos.  I still cannot find my missing memory card and may have to resort to buying a new one.