Animal Train Safari Dessert Table - the cake

This Animal Train Safari party was the perfect theme to celebrate a baby boy’s 1^st birthday! I thought it was so cute that his mummy wanted a rhino to be the focus animal, befitting to birthday boy Ryno’s name! I got to make all the desserts, taking inspiration from the lovely artwork on the table, put together by Lovewithdetails.

Animal Train Safari Dessert Table

First up, the main cake. The cake is a tall 5-layer Devil’s Food Cake, with luscious whipped dark chocolate ganache sandwiched between each layer. I use a 1 to 1 ratio by weight of whipping cream to dark chocolate for the ganache I use to fill cakes with. I prefer whipping the ganache to give it a lighter, "mousse-ier" texture, and most people ask me to make this cake flavour combo!

luscious whipped dark chocolate ganache

buttercream dam so that the filling doesn't ooze out

After dirty icing the cake and letting it chill in the fridge, I covered the cake with a thin layer of light green fondant. Once again, I’m gonna take the time to rave about Massa Ticino Tropic, the Swiss-made fondant that is the only thing I use now to cover my cakes! Covering this tall cake was a breeze, thanks to the elasticity of this premium, high-quality fondant.

I had to use a large 16" cake board to put the cake on, because I had to make sure there was enough room to fit the train cars! Rolling out a large piece of fondant is pretty challenging, especially when the fondant piece is bigger than my work mat! 

fondant-covered 16" cake board!

Once the cake board has dried out a bit, it's safe to place the main cake on top. To decorate the cake, I cut out lots of leaves using different-sized leaf plunger cutters from different shades of green fondant. I made the leaves more "jungle-y" by indenting lines on the edges with a knife. Using royal icing as glue, I started with the top layer of leaves and worked my way down that cake, building up a thick "jungle" of leaves. 

Now, onto the second part of the cake - the train! And since we have a train, it's only fitting to have train tracks! Like this candy train cake, I used black licorice for the tracks, laying them down on the cake board using some royal icing as glue. 

The train cars are all vanilla butter cakes, that I baked in my Nordic Ware train cake pan, one car for each animal, just like the backdrop on the dessert table. I used the same colour scheme as the backdrop as well, to decorate the train cars. I love the cute detail of the number 1 on the train, cut out of fondant using a tappits cutter. 

Each train car is on it's own mini cake board, and actually has an Oreo cookie underneath it to give a little clearance between the wheels and the main cake board. Royal icing was used to "glue" the trains down to the tracks.

Each fondant animal figurine was sculpted in advance and allowed to dry fully before placing them on the train cars, using a bamboo skewer for support. At the front of the car, is the Rhino, of course! He's wearing a little party hat with a tiger-stripes pattern and is holding a fondant number one balloon! I love adding fondant balloons onto cakes. Makes them more interesting! 

the birthday rhino

The stripes on the tiger were drawn on using a black edible ink marker. It would've taken far too long to cut all the stripes out of black fondant and then have to carefully glue them onto the tiger's orange body with a brush of water! 

cute little tail peeking out

Here's the mischievous little monkey, sitting on the "Y" train car. I had a bit of trouble making him look like an actual monkey, taking reference from the monkey on the backdrop. My daughter thought this little guy was a bear! Aw come on. Bears don't have long tails and arms! 

And last but not least, here's the zebra! He's made more or less in the same was as the unicorn on this cake, but on a smaller scale. Again, black edible ink marker was used to draw on the zebra's stripes. 

the zebra's cute rump

all aboard!

tall balloon!

To add to the safari feel, I topped the cake with a fondant number 1, made to look like a jungle tree. And instead of just having plain white "Happy Birthday" letters, I decorated them with tiger and zebra stripes! I like the extra animal feel they add to the cake. 

Phew, so yes, that was all about the cake! Please click here to read on about the rest of the items on Ryno's animal train safari dessert table.. cake pops, cookies & mini cupcakes! Thanks for reading.