Jungle Baby Shower Cake

A friend of mine told me awhile back that I should post cake decorating tutorials. Now, the internet has no shortage of such tutorials, while I have a shortage of time, so I didn't feel very motivated. ;) But it's been one year since I opened Joyful Girl Bakery, turning a hobby into a home business. And I happened to make a cute cake this month and took more photos during the process than usual. So, here we are. To celebrate one year of this joyful girl baking (for customers), I created this blog. 

I made this baby shower cake for a friend's family member who is expecting her second baby. They chose strawberry cake with vanilla buttercream, and a jungle theme for the fondant. My friend sent me a photo of a cake she liked and while I stuck to the general design, like any artist I had to make it my own! Below you will see some general steps outlined with photos. I hadn't planned on using these photos for anything much initially, so please excuse the unedited cell phone quality! Next time I will be sure to be more careful with my photography. ;)

The first step for a cake with fondant or gumpaste figures is to make the figures. I simply add a bit of tylose to my fondant after coloring it, and I make the figures a couple days ahead so they can dry a bit. Below you see the partially finished hippo, and giraffe. I used toothpicks to hold the head to the body (and for the elephant trunk and limbs), and I used edible glue made with water and tylose powder to hold the rest of the animals together (limbs, and details like eyes, etc). I have used online tutorials before for animals but I have enough experience now to freehand. It's really like playing with play dough! ;)

 

Now for the cake. This bottom tier is a two layer 8" round cake, about 4-5" high. Start with your simple white fondant covered cake.

Next, roll out your block fondant very thinly. I also mixed a tiny bit of tylose powder into this fondant to make it more like gum paste. Use your fondant/pizza cutter to make some wavy zebra-like stripes, as seen below.

  Once you have created the stripes to your liking, use a clean paint brush or a wet paper towel to moisten the sides of the white fondant. Leave the top dry. Then simply lay the over the cake. I did the larger stripes first, fairly evenly spaced around the cake, then went back to add skinnier stripes. Don't worry if the stripes are too long, since the top of the cake is dry they won't stick, and you can trim them later.

  

Next I trimmed the stripes on the top of the cake, and I used some of the trimmings to create a few small stripes to place at the bottom of the cake going up, to increase that zebra effect!

The top tier of the cake was a 5" two layer cake. I covered it in the yellow color and then went through a similar process as the zebra stripes. I rolled the brown fondant very thin. This time I actually googled photos of giraffes to get an idea of the patterns of their hair. They are fairly geometric so I just used the pizza cutter to make the shapes as seen, and spent some time placing them to my liking on the cake. I did moisten the yellow fondant first to ensure the brown would stick. I left the very middle of the top empty, because the hippo goes there! ;)

The steps not pictured are making the vine border, grass, and leaves. For the grass I just used very skinny strips of green cut with the pizza cutter mixed with tiny skinny pieces I rolled out. The vines are simply too long "snake" like pieces twisted together. I would recommend using a leaf mold if you have one; I do not, so I simply free handed leaves with a fondant knife and used a sharp edge to make leaf patterns on them.

When I put the top tier on, I purposely didn't do it centered but placed it more to the "back" of the cake, so there would be enough room for the elephant and giraffe to sit on the edge. Then all our animal friends went on the cake, and done! 

 

I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial! This cake was a blast to make and I was pleased with the results. The next cake I plan to post will be another baby shower cake, with buttercream decor. :)