Jungle Buddies Cupcakes

My friend asked me to make jungle buddies cupcakes for her son. I wondered what jungle buddies were, and then she explained "you know, hippos, rhinos, giraffes..." Ohhh! Got it! She said her son's favourite animal is the polar bear. Hooray! I couldn't wait to get started on these cupcakes.

Jungle Buddies Cupcakes!

For the cupcakes themselves, they were yummy chocolate cupcakes, frosted with chocolate French buttercream. I love using French buttercream on cupcakes because they're made with egg yolks, so they give an extra richness to an already delectable treat. Plus, it's a great way to use up all those egg yolks from making macarons & Swiss meringue buttercream! One can only eat so many egg-yolk only omelets before one starts getting concerned about their cholesterol levels!

chocolate cupcakes with chocolate French buttercream frosting

Anyway, back to jungle buddies cupcakes. I wanted to make at least five animals and decided on zebras, hippos, giraffes, rhinos, tigers & polar bears, since those were the ones that the birthday boy was familiar with. Yay, that's six animals :)

Animal toppers!

First up, the zebras. These guys were fun to make. The time consuming part was their stripes. Cutting thin pieces of black fondant, brushing them with water and then strategically placing them on the white fondant base without getting smudges of black everywhere was a challenging and required light fingers. But after getting all the stripes on, and adding the final details, like dry-brushing on "rosy cheeks" using some luster dust, I think these little zebras looked pretty cute!

Zebra fondant toppers

Next up were the hippos. I was trying to decide between purple or blue hippos, but since it's a boy's birthday, I went with blue. The hippos were the easiest to make out of all the animals, because they didn't have any stripes or spots. I just had to cut circles out of two colours of fondant, stick them together with a little bit of water, add eyes and ears and a mouth, and boom, a hippo! Oh, I cut their nostrils out using a circular piping tip.

Hippo fondant toppers

For the giraffes, I dyed some fondant yellow, and used dark chocolate fondant for their snout, spots and antlers. Is that what those thingies on top of their heads are called? (Oh, apparently they're called Ossicones, according to Wikipedia. Woohoo, learned something new today!) Anyway, I love using dark chocolate fondant because it tastes so good! Regular fondant is just sugary-sweet, but dark chocolate fondant tastes like fudge. Mmm tootsie rolls.

Giraffe fondant toppers

The rhinos were straightforward to make, except I didn't have an oval cutter, so I had to eyeball the right amount of fondant for their snouts so that they were all more or less the same size. I used an Americolor Gourmet Food Marker to draw on their mouth and nostrils after sticking their horns on. 

Rhino fondant toppers

The tigers had the most details: lots of stripes, their muzzles and tongues in addition to their eyes, ears and noses. The stripes were all individually hand-cut pieces of fondant, glued on with a bit of water. Their whiskers and the stripe on their tongue were drawn on using the food markers too. They're cute, but I didn't mean to make the tigers look so fierce!

Tiger fondant toppers

The last jungle buddy I made was a polar bear. Ok, so polar bears aren't found in the "jungle" per say, but they are the birthday boy's fave animal, so I had to make them! I used a ball tool to lightly dent their ears. The ball tool is great for making dimples in a golf ball cake too.

Polar bear fondant toppers

And finally, I wanted to make the birthday boy a unique topper for his cupcake, so I made him a little 3D polar bear figurine, sitting on a patch of blue "ice". There's a toothpick running in the centre of the polar bear, acting like his "spine" and helping to support the weight of his head. I let the head dry separately from the body so that it would stay nice and round. Be sure to pre-poke a hole in the bottom of the head so that you can attach it easily to the body. If you don't, the head will likely crack if you try to poke it into the toothpick after it's dry.

I hope Isaac and his friends at school enjoyed all the cute jungle buddies and the chocolatey cupcakes! Happy 3rd Birthday, little guy!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Isaac!