Sunday, September 18, 2016

banana cream birthday cake with handmade fondant monkey topper



The first time I made something for Julieta, I made various Hello Kitty desserts for the dessert table at her bridal shower. I had never met her before, and she had found me through the blog. I was delighted to be making Hello Kitty dessert for a fellow Hello Kitty lover!

Before I knew it, Julieta was contacting me about making baseball cookies, this time for her baby shower! And then this past year, she asked me to make a monkey cake, this time for her son's first birthday party! How time flies! And how exciting it is to me that I got to make goodies for her for such major milestones!


A few weeks before the party, I started on making the fondant monkey, as it would need time to dry completely. I used Wilton fondant for this, tinted chocolate brown with a tiny bit of black to give it a deeper brown. I rolled out and shaped all the parts I would need, and used a bit of water to attach them together.


For the monkey's face, I tinted the fondant with ivory, rolled out a snout, and used a heart-shaped cookie cutter to create the part of the face around the eyes.



After adding an ivory tummy and feet, I used an edible marker to draw on the eyes and the nose.


Hey little guy, you're cute!


For the cake, Julieta wanted a bananas and cream cake. So when it was time to make the cake, I baked up two 10-inch round vanilla cakes (recipe from my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), and sliced each cake in half horizontally to give me four cake layers. Then I filled each layer with freshly whipped cream and sliced bananas.





I ended up not using the fourth cake layer, as it would have ended up too tall of a cake! So I stopped at three layers.


The party colors would be yellow and light green, so I made bright yellow buttercream, and added a light green beaded border. Then I used a small round tip with chocolate brown frosting to pipe the baby's name.


And the final touch - the fondant monkey topper!




Hope the little guy enjoyed his monkey cake! Happy Birthday, Daniel!



4 comments:

  1. Beautiful! I was wondering if you use just regular whipped cream as the filling, or if you use some kind of stabilized whipped cream? How long before serving do you assemble/decorate the cake? I assume you have to keep it refrigerated before serving? Thanks!
    Amy

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    1. @Anonymous - thank you! yes i do like to stabilize my whipped cream. adding gelatin to it works nicely! i usually assemble/decorate the night before a morning pickup. and i tell them to let it come to room temp at least 30 minutes before serving. hope that helps!

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  2. This might seem like a weird question ... but do they eat the fondant topper? Is the fondant topper rock hard when you place it on top of the cake? Also, love your blog. :)

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    1. @leed1 - haha, no typically they do not eat the fondant topper. i don't like the taste of fondant to begin with, that's why i don't use it to cover my cakes, but secondly fondant toppers need a couple weeks to dry out completely so that they are hard and don't wilt and fall over! however the cool thing is that once the fondant topper is completely dry and rock hard, you can keep it as a keepsake on your bookshelf or wherever, as long as you keep it in a cool dry place away from the sun.

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