Jan 15, 2015

Jungle Animals themed Cake


I'm so excited to share my first cake this New Year....a super fun, extremely cute and bright Jungle Animals themed tiered cake. Ridhaan's mom is my very good friend and she had asked me to do his birthday cake many months before. Although I wasn't sure if I would be able to make it (due to some other matters) I finally decided to go ahead. Her only request was for a Mango Mousse filling and some animals to go on the cake to match with the Animal themed birthday party she had in mine. Rest all was left to me and sky was the limit....

I'm proud of this cake for several reasons.
(a) This is my first non-fondant tiered cake with a smooth fondant-like finish. It took a lot of time to get the sides smooth and edges straight but it was worth it. There were some imperfections but let's say I decorated over them...hehe :-P These are very important factors in the word of beautiful cakes so it mattered a lot to me as well and I'm glad it worked well.
(b) This was my first tiered cake with a creamy Mousse filling. Mousse fillings are generally very soft and people don't recommend them for tiered cakes or even for cakes that need to sit out for a long time. But I tried it and it worked fine. Maybe I should thank the freezing temperatures here in Minnesota for that!
(c) My first cake with actual sugar figurines that you can eat! :-D

The Cakes were Vanilla White Cake with creamy Mango Mousse Filling covered with color tinted Vanilla Buttercream with marshmallow fondant accents for decoration and figurines. 

Until now I've never really tried making edible figurines, except for the Clowns I made for Lil'Appu's 1st Birthday Cake. Usually I just keep a plastic toy topper or a themed candle topper and just decorate the rest of the cake. But this time I felt with the animal theme it would be great to have some cute looking animals on the cake, so I went ahead with making them.
I made a Giraffe, Zebra, Elephant and Lion. I wish I had made the giraffe neck longer, but other than that I was happy with the rest of the animal figurines. These were made almost a week in advance and they hardened perfectly. 


My son used to come back daily from daycare and go stare at the animals...he just loved them. He is so used to me making cakes for friends that he doesn't touch or disturb my 'cake stuff' and for some reason he thinks he can go for the party anyways and eat the cake and decorations there (which is usually true)...so after the cake is cut its a whole different story, he wants everything first ;-D 
He kept requesting that I make a Monkey as well and I told him we'll make one directly on the cake. I don't know if he understood, but he kept waiting for the monkey every single day :)

The Tree toppers were a last minute addition. After I placed the animals on the cake with the Lion on top I just felt it needed something more...I thought about placing a Sun, but then the colors of the Lion and sun would be almost same (yellow-orange) , so finally decided to place the same trees that I had placed around the cake. Well, you can call them Coconut trees although the leaves should have been longer ;-) It's all in the imagination....hehe! If you notice I even gave small scale like texture to the stem of the tree to give it a proper 3D tree look. I decorated the cake board with chocolate buttercream to give it a muddy ground like appearance and it looked pretty good.

Then there were vines, some grass, more leaves, coconut trees and flowers to complete the overall look of the cake. I wanted the Monkey to be hanging from the tail on a vine and that's how I did it.


My fun animals :)


My friend had already bought the candle that would go on the cake so we placed that at the venue. Here are some pics of the beautiful Cake Table and cake cutting :)





Here's how the cake slice looked like! It really was yumm if I may say so.....ahem!


I'm still waiting for some more pics that the photographer at the party had taken....I'm sure my friend is waiting for those more than me :-P 
The party was super fun, the decorations were perfect and colorful and the food was awesome and not to mention how lovely the cake was...hehe! 
Lil'Ridhaan happily ate up the sugar Elephant and lil'Appu went for the Lion, but I don't have pics of any of that...hopefully the photographer took some :)

Will share more fun cake stories in upcoming posts...until then take care and bye bye!

-Manju


17 comments:

  1. Firstly let me start off with a BIG thank you for this wonderful cake ! This was def a sweet start to our New year ! I absolutely loved the cake and it went so well with the theme.
    Im so glad that I have you as my close friend and inspite of everything else going on with you , it was really nice of you to make this cake for us.
    The animal figurines looked super perfect that some of my friends couldn't even believe that it was hand made ! Loved every tiny detail of the cake. The coconut tree and the monkey hanging from the vine was too cute !
    The highlight of the cake was not only was it a brilliant looking cake , it tasted even better . Absolutely loved the filling.
    Ridhaan loved the lil Elephant and he ate the tiny trunk first and then the ears ;-)
    Love all the pictures too. Happy to see you got the plate and the spoon-tissue wrap too ;-)
    Let us wait and see how official set of pics turn out to be.
    Thank you once again for all your time and effort. Also a big thanks to Manish and Appu for supporting you.

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  2. Wow superb.Hats off dear.but wat is that grass? ?

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    1. If you meant the grass under the cake, its a placemat that my friend bought for the cake table arrangement....does give a good grass-like effect doesn't it ;-)

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  3. The cake looks spectacular Manju! well done! :) First time on your blog!

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  4. You can definitely be proud of this cake Manju..Looks extremely professional ...Colorful too..

    Have seen your message.Happy New year to you as well Manju.Have peace and love along with you always dear.I am all fine.Went for holidays and now into some serious work yaar.Sometimes priorities change no ? Enjoying life in many different angles...But will post when it's compulsive...Keep up your jovial work dear,hugs,

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  5. So fantabulous cake dear...... The figurine are beautiful and the theme perfectly matches ur decorations.... Kudoos....and hat off to ur efforts...... Firstly I thought it was fondant that covered the cake... but when I came to know it is butter cream, itz really amazing..... Well done dear.... :)

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  6. Hi Manju,
    Mash Allah, cake has turned out so well. Cannot take off my eyes, it would have been great if you have posted video tutorial.
    I can see your friend commented here and she is too happy with your work. Now, all your hard work has paid off.
    Have a great year ahead!

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  7. And you should be proud of yourself Manju!!! That is one fun loving festive, gorgeous cake!!! I can't even imagine the amount of time and energy that went into such a creation!!! You did a beautiful job. Kudos to YOU!!!

    I'm thrilled to know you did such a wonderful job with buttercream. I know it is more difficult to work with but personally, I think it tastes oh so much better!!!

    Thank you so much for sharing your 1st cake of the year with us, Manju. Really spectacular!!!

    P.S. BTW, There is a Friends cookbook. I posted about it for Friendship Day! Here's the link:)
    http://www.monthsofediblecelebrations.com/2014/08/cooking-with-friends-happy-friendship.html

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  8. Hi Manju, I must say you have excellent cake decoration skills, and great finesse! really professional and creative! loving it!

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  9. I cant stop staring at that cake... and did you say that the cover is not fondant??? Really... wow, MaShaAllah looks absolutely neat... awesome job dear...

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  10. wow..the finishing looks absolutley fine piece of art dear...the figurines are so perfectly made and colored,I remember seeing something similar with my son 'zoo toy' when he was a year old..looks professional and hats off to ur great work once again,Manju :)

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  11. Hi Manju, visited your blog after a long time today. Loved the cake, the animals looked perfect and the monkey is absolutely brilliant, can't imagine the look on Manav's face when he finally saw it...! The inside looks like it melted in your mouth too....!

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  12. Manju you are the cake queen! This is absolutely amazing!

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  13. Hi! my name it's Gaby and i'm from chile.
    Your cake looks great, im doing it for my son's birthdays party!
    Definitly

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  14. Hi! my name it's Gaby and i'm from chile.
    Your cake looks great, im doing it for my son's birthdays party!
    Definitly

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  15. This is a lovely cake Manju one of my customers has asked for a similar design for her twins first birthday but with the traditional English filling I am going to use x2 6” for the top tier and x2 8” (20can) for the bottom tier. Looking forward to the animals tooThanks for sharing

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