Naked Elephant Cake

My ex-coworker's nephew was celebrating his 3rd birthday. The boy loves elephants so she wanted to get him a cake topped with an elephant. She also asked if there was a way to have less frosting on the cake "for the sake of her nephew's health" since his mother didn't want him eating too much sweet stuff, so I suggested a naked cake. I liked the effect of this naked rainbow cake, but this time, it would be a chocolate cake.  

Naked Chocolate Cake with Elephant Topper

The cake is the ever-popular Devil's Food Cake, filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache and just a smidge of chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream to dam the filling for each tier to prevent the ganache from squishing out the sides. 

Love his tiny toes!

The fondant elephant cake topper was made in the same way as the elephant topper for this cake. I had told the birthday boy's aunt that it would just be an elephant on top, but I couldn't resist having the elephant hold a little balloon with a number 3 on it. I used a lollipop stick instead of wire to hold the balloon up this time, cuz I ran out of silver wire and I can't seem to find it at the craft store or the hardware store!

sky high balloon

The birthday wording was also just suppose to be hand-written with buttercream, but again, I couldn't help myself and just put in the extra effort to do it out of fondant using letter cutters and tap-pits. It just looks so much neater and more impressive than handwriting, in my opinion. 

fondant lettering

I'm glad to hear that birthday boy Marc and his family really enjoyed this elephant-topped naked chocolate cake. Happy 3rd Birthday, Marc!