Jungle Buddies Cupcake

To celebrate his baby girl's first month, one of the guys I used to work with asked if I could make some Jungle Buddies cupcakes, similar to the ones I did here. I made seven different types of animal toppers for the cupcakes, making sure to add bows to some of them, since they are for a baby girl.  

Jungle Buddies Cupcakes

All the animals were made in the same way as these Jungle Buddies cupcakes, with the addition of a seventh animal - a panda! I think I still have pandas on the brain from last week's panda party! For the stripes on the zebras and the tigers, I drew them on using a black edible ink food marker instead of cutting pieces out of black fondant. 

yummy chocolate fondant giraffes

My favourite part of the zebra toppers is their blushing cheeks, which I dry brushed onto the dried fondant using some pink shimmery lustre dust. 

blushing zebra cupcake toppers

cute blue hippos

big-horned rhinos

polar bear trio

The tigers are slightly different this time. I took the inspiration for the stripes on their forehead from a child's toy box that I saw while window shopping at the mall! I thought it made them look less fierce than the first set of tigers that I made. 

friendly tiger toppers

The design of the pandas followed the ones I did for the panda party, except now these were 2D pandas instead of little panda figurines! It's great to have a whole bunch of different sized piping tips and circle cutters to use to cut out the eyes. And, I added dots of white food colouring to their noses to bring a little life into them.

panda party

To make the Jungle Buddies set a little more feminine (since they are for a baby girl's first month party), I added pink bows to some of the animals. The bows are just fondant hearts cut out using a plunger cutter, and placed tip to tip, with a pink circle in the middle. I didn't put bows on all of them though, because some had to be boy animals, for the baby girl's older brother!  I love how cute they all look! 

I made sure to let all the fondant toppers dry overnight in an air-conditioned room until they were nice and stiff before placing them on top of the cupcakes. I didn't want them sagging and losing their shape. 

let the toppers completely dry

The cupcakes were eggless chocolate cupcakes, topped with a 1M rose swirl of chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream. Baking them in soufflé cups means that they are less likely to topple over during transport, over traditional cupcake wrappers even without the use of cupcake inserts in the box. 

double chocolate cupcakes

seven types of animals, all ready for the party

Happy 1st Month, baby Kayla!