Babies and cakes and toobs, oh my!

They sat there…looking at me with those baby eyes. Longing, wanting to be picked up, needing to be chosen for that special purpose.

Some were just in diapers. Others in full footie pajamas. One was sleeping on his back. Two others, crawling. Blocks and blankets – some had things to play with. Three were big enough to sit up. Two were too little so they rested on their backs – one gazing to the side, the other, reaching up.

And they were freaking me out…

Babies.

Mardi Gras was upon us. I had never really paid much attention to the “Fat Tuesday” traditions, but my husband lived for a while in New Orleans and he wanted something purple, green and yellow, as the tradition goes. And he wanted to bring it to work.

“It” being a King Cake.

I have made my fair share of cakes, but they usually look something like this:

Or this:

Or this:

So a King Cake was new. And that’s where the babies come in to play. Apparently, a King Cake needs to contain a baby. It used to represent the baby Jesus, though I’m not sure how he’d feel about being baked in a cake. Nowadays, it’s more about luck – if you have the piece with the baby in it, good luck is on its way to you. If you don’t choke on the baby first, of course.

So being an open minded cake artist, I agreed to the bake and hide assignment.

Ingredients: check. I took the easy route and made a cake using crescent rolls. I’m usually a scratch baker, but since I was throwing in some plastic, I decided to go all out processed.

Then I headed to Michaels in the hopes of finding Jesus I mean a good luck baby. (Glad there is no Hobby Lobby around here – but that’s another post for my Feminist Friday.)

And I found these adorable I mean nightmare inducing babies.

Once you’ve seen them, you can’t unsee them.

Seriously.

The babies came in a “toob.”  A “toob of babies.” Jesus.

I had to bake the cake as quickly as possible so I didn’t have to look at the babies any longer.

My kids thought the babies were awesome. I baked an extra cake for us at home – my youngest got the monster baby. He was thrilled!

After we devoured the cake (it was delicious, I must say), we put the scary baby Jesus back in the toob so he could hang out with his buddies.

My husband’s colleagues loved the cake. But no one got the baby. I think they avoided that piece on purpose. But that’s OK, because we ate the leftovers of that cake too and my seven year old now has double good luck. Not that that was planned or anything.

After the cakes had been eaten, and all the babies were snug back in their toob, my middle son held it up high and let all the babies fall out while gleefully yelling “baby shower!”

Maybe the babies would have enjoyed the boobie cake.  Maybe not.  But either way, I think I’m giving up babies for Lent.