Thursday, March 15, 2012

Monkey Cake

We made this cake for Babygirl's first birthday party, and it was a smashing success.  See what I did there?  "Smashing", because toddlers smash pastries on their face?  Folks, I'll be here all week.

This is a great dessert because it's tasty, but is also a good "first" cake since it's more banana based and thus lower sugar.  Do you like banana bread?  Then you should like this.  I think I'd been looking forward to making the first birthday cake since we brought Babygirl home from the hospital.  And I'm not even a good baker!  Funny how we fixate on certain things

In the end it was pretty straightforward to bake, and the Smitten Kitchen instructions were flawless.  I needed some help with the actual face decorating, since it takes a smooth grip to make straight lines with frosting.  Luckily, Babygirls's uncle (also known as my younger brother) was more than happy to take over the final decorative touches.  He's got nerves of steel.


Monkey cake

Cupcake smash cake


I'm not even going to attempt to transcribe the recipe, since baking can be really complex. And really, it's a science,and you should never (never!) mess with baking ratios.   The link below will take you to the original recipe, and also 3 different ways to approach making the monkey face.  For what it's worth, we did option 2 - two 9" layers for main face, ears made of cupcakes and extra cupcake smash cake.

http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/09/monkey-cake/

2 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh, that is too cute. A friend made a monkey cake once and it was such hard work to get it to look cute, not crazy! Good job!

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