While baby showers have been around for decades, gender reveal parties are gaining traction as way to announce whether an expected baby will be a boy or girl.
Once expectant parents have news from the doctor’s office, an announcement can be made, often in a fun way, involving cake. Local bakeries have even had their own experiences with gender reveal cakes.
Peggy Shurtz, an employee at Extraordinary Cupcakes, located on Richmond Road in Williamsburg, said the bakery does a lot of cakes for this occasion.
“A lot of times, our parents don’t even know whether it’s a boy or a girl,” said Shurtz.
Shurtz added that sometimes the couple may bring in an envelope from the doctor’s office, which they have not yet opened themselves. In a case like this, the parents will be surprised along with the party guests when the gender of the coming baby is revealed.
A gender reveal cake can have many variations, but the exterior of the cake will have decoration indicative of both boys and girls, and the interior of the cake will hold the surprise, usually a pink or blue color in some form.
“We have about half a dozen different flavors of our cupcakes that have a filling. What we’ll do is we’ll color the filling either the pink or the blue,” said Shurtz.
She said the bakery has a few different filling options that could be colored: a fluffy white pastry cream, a coconut pastry cream and a vanilla custard filling.
The Extraordinary is a popular cake choice for the gender reveal cakes, according to Shurtz. The Extraordinary is a chocolate cake with a fluffy cream filling and topped with chocolate ganache.
Although cupcake is in the name of the bakery, they also make regular cakes and have a photo gallery full of occasion cakes of both varieties. “We do cakes in any of our cupcake flavors,” said Shurtz.
“Rosa [Gonzalez] is our baker who does all the gender reveal stuff,” said Shurtz.
Patricia Clark, executive director of Sugar Plum Bakery, located on Laskin Road in Virginia Beach, said, “We do [gender reveal cakes] when people request it. It’s not a real common thing, but we have done them.”
She shared a couple of examples where the bakery incorporated an item brought in by the customer into a gender reveal cake.
One such item was some blue-colored candy to announce a little boy. The bakery cut a pocket into the center of the cake for the candy, so that, when the cake was cut, the candy would spill out like it would from a pinata.
“People have brought in little charms that are on strings that they can pull out to see what the reveal is,” said Clark. The charm was inserted between the cake layers.
Clark said the bakery would sometimes do a pink or blue filling in the cake.
She talked about the exterior of one creative cake the bakery has done for a gender reveal occasion. “We did a little cowboy hat out of fondant and little bandanas out of fondant that were both pink and blue on the outside of the cake.” A cut into the cake revealed the surprise.
Scratch Bakery, with locations on William Styron Square in Newport News and on Mellen Street in Hampton, creates a gender reveal cake for customers approximately once a week.
Bakery owner, LaShonda Sanford, said that most of the customers requesting gender reveal cakes bring in an envelope from the doctor’s office to the bakery and won’t know the baby’s sex themselves until the cake is cut open.
Bakery employees get into the fun of the reveal as well. “It’s a lot of fun for us,” said Sanford. “Even the staff tries to guess what it is before we open the envelope.”
The bakery does a variety of cakes for this occasion. “Either we can tint your cake pink or blue or we can make the filling of the buttercream in the center either pink or blue or we can do cupcakes that are filled with either pink or blue filling in the center,” said Sanford.
Cake exteriors can be different styles, with little question marks in blue or pink and the text, “Look to See,” or decorated with little pacifiers or little babies or other designs. Sanford’s favorite cake design the bakery has done for this occasion depicted a football jersey from the father’s favorite team on one side and a cheerleader’s outfit on the other side, with the whole exterior spattered in pink and blue polka dots.
Her favorite fun moment related to this occasion was when a mother with four boys walked into the bakery and said, “This better not be another boy.”
“Everybody is able to gather in celebration,” said Sanford. “Everybody loves cake, so why not marry the two together?
Whether you’re having a little boy or a little girl, there are many fun ways to share the big surprise with family and friends, and creative ways to do it through cake.
Have a fun way of celebrating you’d like to share? Send us your story at celebrations@localvoicemedia.com. Check out more celebrations in WYDaily’s new section.
