Jungle Cake

Here we go! That is the result of many hours of work during hot days in Sydney. I used the jungle cake decorations I made a few days ahead and which I talked about in my previous post. First lesson I learnt from this is that I really need to plan my birthday cake design, size and shape very precisely from the very beginning. I made the marshmallow fondant jungle cake decorations of a particular size having just a rough idea of the shape and the size of the cake. But then I changed my mind and made a different size and shape of the cake itself and in the beginning I was a bit worried that my jungle animals decorations will not fit nicely on the cake now. But it turned out very nice and I could figure out how to decorate my jungle birthday cake and it still looked as good as I planned and wanted.

I think this would be a perfect birthday cake for boys as well as girls. Kids all love jungle animals, well... any animals really, especially when they are so yummy! Some ideas were coming as I was decorating the birthday cake. It very often happens to me and till the very last moment I don’t know exactly what I am going to get as the result. It is a lot of fun and the best thing is that it keeps my mind busy all the time. I keep thinking about something for the cake decorations every second while I’m doing it. It is so fascinating.

The birthday cake itself was a butter cake with lemon filling. I whipped some butter with sugar and added cooked semolina with grated lemons. Semolina adds a lot of lightness to the buttercream. It makes it smooth, light and just not like any basic butter cream. Lemons also add a lot of flavour and some bitterness to such a sweet and rich cake.

As it always happens with such cakes, the animal fondant decorations are taken off in a second by kids when they are allowed to eat a birthday cake and mostly the adults then enjoy the cake itself. Well... it is birthday – happy time for everyone!