Lil Animals

My second animal figures cake differed stylistically from the first, less "fun" and cartoony and more cute with a little bit of elegance thrown in. It's for a baby shower after all, which is less about what the newborn is going to like and more about the involved adults I think! I really liked how the sides came out with that organic swirled texture in the peach-colored cream cheese icing. The design I based this cake on was given to my manager by the person who ordered the cake, but I don't know where she got it originally so unfortunately I can't reference it properly, but it turned out pretty differently, with different animals and the monkey character hanging off the side.


I love pearl dust. Put that stuff on EVERYTHING and it gets all shiny.


So here's a funny story: my manager was explaining the composition of the cake to me and told me it would feature three animals: an alligator, an elephant and a monkey. So I started with the alligator, worked my way through the elephant and was JUST finished up the monkey and placing it next to its fellows when he came to check up on my. He looked at the figures for a second and said, "A monkey? I thought it was supposed to be a lion." So I sadly mushed up my monkey and started working on a lion, making sure to ask him for the order sheet just so we could be sure he wasn't making things up again. I had finished all the figures and placed them on the cake when I went to the bakers to check on some cakes I needed for another piece I was working on, and when I got back my manager had left the original order sheet on my counter. I read it. It called for an alligator, an elephant and A MONKEY. I was pretty livid by that point, so I took a break, and when I came back to this cake I decided to make the setback into an opportunity and improve on the original cake design. Booyah! Supercute.

I like this shot because the alligator is my favorite, and you can also see the monkey's curly little tail. The family that ordered the cake called the warehouse to thank us when the received it... If that had happened before then nobody told me =P That's actually entirely possible (see above monkey/lion confusion anecdote).