Jungle Animal Cake and Cupcakes

I am grateful to my loyal clients that have come back to me, year after year, to celebrate their kids' birthdays! It's cool to see how the kids' interests change over time, and see just how big they've grown! I've been making cakes for birthday boy Ted and his sister for a few years now, and am so glad that their mummy keeps coming back to me! Ted's 1st birthday cake was this cool carved rocket ship. Fast-forward three years later, and he's into jungle animals, so, jungle cake and cupcakes it is! 

Jungle cake and cupcakes

The cake was two tiers of vanilla butter cake, filled with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream in between the layers. The cupcakes had to be chocolate, since that was the birthday boy's sister loves anything chocolate! 

cute jungle animal cupcakes

jungle cake

It's always a lot of fun to make fondant animal figurines, cuz you're given free reign to shape and mould without having to worry about creating a close likeness to a particular character, as you would for Mickey Mouse or Hello Kitty for example. 

king of the jungle

The important thing when making figurines is to allow the head to dry separately from the body until they're both mostly dry, before placing the head, using some royal icing as glue and a toothpick for support. If you place the head on while the body is still soft, the fondant ends up spreading under the weight, and you may end up with overweight, animals, with large, round bellies! I like to use an ice cream scoop sprinkled with icing sugar to dry the heads on, to keep the back of the head nice and round. 

elephant, all set to party

spot the snake in the grass

The palm tree has a long chopstick running through the middle, for support. I cut out, shaped the leaves and left them to dry completely before attaching them onto the tree trunk with thick royal icing. Otherwise, you would have to be creative and find ways to hold the leaves in place while they dried stiff, or have all the leaves end up drooping down, thanks to gravity. 

tall tree in the jungle

a couple of swimmers in the water

what sharp teeth you have!

The leopard pattern on the fondant number 4 was drawn on using edible ink markers. Easy peasy! Love how these jungle cupcakes and cakes turned out! Glad to hear that the birthday boy was super happy with them! Happy 4th Birthday, Ted!

Happy 4th Birthday, Ted!