Jungle Cake

Annika's little friend Gage had his 5th birthday party this past Saturday. Gage's mom is a good friend of mine and asked if I'd be up for making his cake. Ummmm..... an excuse to bake? Count me in!! Unfortunatley, a few weeks later, I volunteered to help with the Bite of Broadview and was going to be manning the dunk tank all Saturday. So, I didn't get to attend Gage's shindig. That didn't stop me/us from getting the cake made. The party had a jungle theme, so the cake had to follow suit.

The cake was a multi-day project. I baked early in the week and froze the cakes; it consisted of a 10" tier (comprised of 4 cakes) and a 6" tier (comprised of another 4 cakes). Thursday night, I stacked the cakes and then covered them with the green fondant. After that, I did the work on the palm trees. On Friday, Eric (aka, my amazing artistic director and sculptor extrordinaire) helped create the animals. While he sculpted, I did the painting for the animals that required paint (zebra, giraffe, snake). Our house was really warm on Friday, so we ran into a little difficulty with the fondant/gum paste... it kept slumping. ACK! We wound up using toothpicks as internal support and we rotated the animals in and out of the refrigerator, just to keep them cooler.

All in all, a huge success!!