Monkey Madness

Here is the monkey cake I made for my sister-in-law’s jungle-themed baby shower, recently.

This bit of insanity was inspired by my sister, Trina’s insanity several year’s ago. Apparently, she was aided in the design by my other sister, Kerali. Just so you know, insanity runs in my family!

This cake is made using the Wilton 3-D teddy bear cake pan. Follow the directions for baking (use a pound cake mix with a regular cake mix, so the cake will be firm enough to stand up). The major adjustment is the ears. We found it easiest to freeze the bear cake before attempting surgery. Cut off the ears and move them from the top of the head to the sides and attach with toothpicks.

The other big adjustment is adding a tail. I used marshmallows attached with toothpicks to create the shape along the back. I actually made the tail longer than in the picture. I wound it up into a curl around the back of his head.

I frosted the cake with a light brown base coat. I actually used the chocolate butter cream recipe with about 1/3 of the cocoa that was called for. This turned out darker than I thought it would. If you want a lighter monkey, I would just do butter cream frosting and add some food coloring. After applying the base coat, trace around the borders of where the fur will go with a toothpick. Decide where the arms and feet will go. The pan is designed so that the feet will stick out like a teddy bear’s do. It seemed to make more sense to have those be the monkey’s knees and to pipe feet down at the bottom center of the cake.

Since my cake was for a baby shower, I used a huge tip to pipe on rows of white frosting and smoothed it with water and/or corn syrup. The diaper would be cute out of fondant (but I didn’t have any). I also cut enough cake out of the mouth to insert a pacifier decoration, and I put plastic pins on the diaper.

The most time-consuming part is adding the fur. I darkened the chocolate butter cream with lots more powder. (It didn’t seem like it was getting dark enough, but darkened as it dried on the cake). My piping technique would have made any Wilton instructor shudder. I wanted to use the grass tip, like my sister had, but realized I didn’t have on. So preferring a more organic look, I took a flower tip and just added fur as randomly as I could.

Don't forget to add hands and feet over the top of the fur.

Using the large round tip, I piped extra frosting for the nose and smoothed it out. I tried the junior mints for eyes. Initially they looked like alien eyes to me, until I added large circles of white frosting behind. Pushing the junior mints down into the frosting, added a little dimension to the face, making our monkey look like a wide-eyed, scared, baby.

The biggest problem with a cake like this is that no one wants to eat it! It made a great centerpiece (and eventual dessert) at the shower!