Well it's been a very busy month of October for me, but not on the cake side, so I'm afraid I just haven't have a chance to get any baking/decorating done. And of course, true to fashion, I'm choco-block with requests for November!! So this cake kicks off the month, and what a challenging one it was (cake that is)...
I decided to take a few pics as I went along so you can see how I put it together. Please excuse the mess in the background of the photos, or the odd silhouette of the hubby lurking like a cake stalker!
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| From left to right: Body, Head and Base |
The request came in from a work colleague, for his girlfriend who loves monkeys. I took the literal approach of "monkey see, monkey do" and didn't ask any questions!!! I knew I wanted one main cake with a monkey sitting on top of it, in a 3-D format, so I decided to search for deep tins that I can have the depth for Marvin's (that's what I've decided to call him btw) head and body. I was kind of fortunate it is coming close to Christmas, as a pudding bowl tin (oven proof) was just the shape I needed for his body. I decided to go with a deep cake tin for the head, so I could have enough to work with for ears, etc, and then just a large spring-form tin for the base cake. It was like Russian dolls at one stage, with all the different size components. You can see the different tins in the picture above, so you get the gist!
Next I needed to make the base, which simply involved getting ready to roll fondant (my aul reliable!) and die it pink. For this I have learned the art of delegation works best, and I roped in my lovely assistant hubby to fold in the colouring in to the block of fondant. I don't know if anyone has experiences massaging a hard block of, what is essentially sugar and egg, in your hands. 'Tis tough work lads, so I called in the army for it! I picked pale pink because, well it was for a girl, and pale pink goes well against the brown. I perched my base cake up on my turn table (check me out all professional-like!!) and covered in Betty Crocker's Vanilla Fudge Spread so the fondant would stick to it. I used Betty's as I wanted to save the butter for my main event....Marvin's fur!! So I placed the rolled out fondant over the full cake, and then just cut away the excess to be neatly covering the whole cake. Simples!!
Now for the fun bit, assembling Marvin! As mentioned above, I am going to use the pudding bowl shape as his body, and the next size cake for his head (stay with me on this one!). So I leveled off the pudding-shaped sponge to sit flat upside down on the base cake, then cut out a circle with a large cutter for his head. After the circle was cut away on the sponge, I cut half circles just up from where I had cut out the head piece, so they'd sit on the head, if ya folly me!! I discovered the only difference between Mickey Mouse and Marvin the Monkey is the positioning of the ears (imagine!). If they were close to the top of his head, it was Mickey, but going directly out from the side of the head is Marvin. Now for ya!!
Using a long bamboo stick (can be obtained in art/stationary/baking shops) I stuck a bamboo right in the center of the cake, and sat his body directly on the base cake. I placed the ears on with cocktail sticks and butter cream. I then rolled out some ready to roll marzipan, and cut a small and smaller circle with a round cutter for the face and belly. I had thought the yellow would look good, but you'll see in the fourth picture, white fondant looked better! So I stuck on the marzipan with butter cream (in which the white fondant was stuck on top of this same way).
- 9 oz (225g) Milk Chocolate (I like O'Connell's Irish brand)
- 1 lb (450g) Softened butter (I use Superquinn own brand)
- 2 lbs (900g) Icing sugar
- 2 oz (50g) Cocoa powder
Melting the chocolate in a large glass bowl over a smaller pot of boiling water. In a separate bowl cream the butter, cocoa powder and icing sugar together with a wooden spoon. I use this method instead of the hand beater as it blends it in properly, and doesn't end up sending lumps of butter flying around the kitchen! As this was a rather large amount of ingredients I called in the army (hubby) to use his manly strength. When this is all blended in together to a creamy consistency, I poured in the melted chocolate in to the butter cream bowl. This is now ready to be piped! I used a closed star nozzle to get the proper fur effect, and piped this all on to the body and head.
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| white fondant over marzipan face & belly |
The arms and legs were ready roll chocolate fondant (Irish brand Decobake) simply rolled in to long sausage-like rolls. Of course I rolled an extra long one for his tail! The hands and feet were plain white fondant ready to roll icing, molded and shaped in to feet/hand-like lumps. As these were being placed on to the body, coming from under the ears, I just pressed them against the butter cream in the position I wanted them to be, and then used edible glue to stick on the hands and feet to the end of the arms and legs. Now the banana was a small roll of marzipan, with painted black colouring for the banana strip effect. Fierce fancy altogether!!
The finishing touches were his eyes, nose and mouth in which I used Dr. Oetker Writing Icing in black. For the happy birthday, I just rolled out fondant and piped the words with the remaining chocolate icing. Now at this stage the kitchen was ROASTING with the heat of the oven, and the lights, etc, so I noticed poor aul Marvin's left ear starting to droop. A one-eared monkey isn't the most attractive so I took the last of the photos and placed him in the spare fridge.Our beer fridge to be exact!! So we had a monkey chilling in the beer fridge....literally. So here's the end result:
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