Monkey Business

I had a friend come to me and ask how to make a cake that looked like a monkey.  I drew him a little diagram and he said he'd give it a try. A few days before the baby shower I asked how it was going and he said he was just going to make a regular cake and draw a monkey on it.  Umm, NO!  It's a baby shower cake for his wife.  I told him I would make it for him and he asked to help.  We took 2 8" cakes and cut one into an oval, savings the sides for arms and legs, then cut the other in circle for the head, layered on a face and made ears,   An hour later:

Tada!  We have a monkey worthy of a baby shower for little Liam.

On Monday I got a thank you note from his wife saying how much she loved the cake and how amazing it tasted :)

The following weekend I did a cake for a ten-year old's birthday party.  I had a live model for this but he kept getting impatient and either moved around or needed to be right in the middle.

He is made of gumpaste.  The color in the eyes is spray on food dye.  

The shades of brown are cocoa painting, you mix cocoa powdered with vodka to get a color pallate and you do the shading with the different intensity of color.  The vodka disapates and you are just left with the color,

I took a nylon pastry brush apart to make his whiskers. 

He is just the topper for the cake

I also made a tail!  The bottom border on the cake is paw prints in alternating purple and pink.

The last cake I only had to finish.  

Seems like a simple task 1)write inscription 2) border 3) decorates

The picture is a bit small but the first step didn't work out so well.  I double checked the cake order and got the chocolate bag,   I was writing along  minding my own business, spelling ppls names wrong.....lucky for me it relatively easy to fix you freeze it for a couple minutes then lift the letters off the cake.  The hard part is making the new writing match the old writing so no one knows some thing went wrong.  You really should pick off entire words or it looks crooked.

End of Season is FINALLY HERE! Of course we do have things that need worked on.  The recipe binder is starting be less of a mess after I spent several hours of quality time with it this week.  

we have small bqts thurs and Saturday.  but I enjoyed the less than 12 hour day - 2 days in a row!