Monkey Cake

I made this Monkey Cake for a friend's 2 year-old's birthday this weekend. She used it as the centerpiece for the birthday party and then took it to a photo shoot on Monday with plans to let her daughter dig in as the photographer snapped away. Because of the plans for it's destruction, I made chocolate cake, which really shows up well in pictures. I also decided to ice the cake with buttercream, instead of covering it in fondant, because I worried the pieces of fondant she pulled off would look really odd in the pictures. Instead of tinting the buttercream blue, I sprayed the buttercream with edible food-color spray to make it look more uneven and sky-like.

I made the monkey out of fondant, and must thank Lorraine for her YouTube video about making monkey cupcake toppers. Without her tutorial I wouldn't have been able to figure out how to make the face on this cute guy. I used Runts candy for the bananas instead of making them out of fondant, though I did wonder about my decision as I opened bag after bag of candy only to find 2-4 bananas in each one (what is that about?). Now I have a large bag of the other Runts candy in my pantry, left-over from the 10 bags I opened to get the bananas. Lucky for me, my kids like Runts and I don't ;)

I used a toothpick to make the cute monkey toes.

I love to layer green details on cakes like this. The different layers and shapes give a ton of dimension to the piping. And I always sprinkle rainbow nonpareils on grass that I put on kid's cakes. They add a bit of extra fun to the grass and make the cakes look really cute!