Monkey Business

I've been watching threadcakes since 2011...and ever since, I wanted to participate. But each year, as time went by, I would find myself a new excuse not to make a cake because I was feeling intimidated, nervous and scared when I saw all the awesome creations made by some of the competitors!

This year was different though! I told my husband about it, and he motivated me to make a threadcake. Plus, I told myself that if I didn't like how it turned out, I would just keep it to myself and nobody would ever know about it right? Conclusion of my first try at baking and decorating a threadcake? I liked the result hahaha. I like it enough for me to actually feel confident about sharing the experience as well as the result.

I started by looking at all the threadless designs available (omg...so many beautiful designs) and I couldn't stop thinking of ''Monkey Bussiness'' by Alex Solis ...I chose this one because it's really ''badass''...I mean, look at this monkey for crying out loud! He looks like he came out of mix between the movies The Godfather and Planet of the apes.

I wanted to keep it as identical as possible to the original design, expecially color wise with the grey, black and red.

I starded the ''cake'' process by building the scructure, which is a wood board, on wich I added some foamcore to be able to cut out a circle to ''hide'' the flange. I also used a 1\2 inch pvc pipe and a 3\4 inch couple. The board is a 12 inch square and the cake is about 15 inch tall. This is my second (or maybe third) cake scructure... so I wanted to keep it simple. I also used foamcore and bubble tea straws for support in the cake.

Then, I started baking...I decided to make a banana cake, because it's my favorite flavor and, you know, I was making a monkey cake haha.
And, I especially love the banana and chocolate combination, so I made a chocolate swiss meringue buttercream, but I wanted to add a little caramel flavor as well so I made caramel swiss meringue buttercream and alternated the two in between the cake layers.

I stacked and carved the cake, and I was terrified...carving cakes can be very hard, and I really wanted to get the dimensions right. When that was done, I felt like the hard part was over.

I covered the cake in dark chocolate ganache (my favorite).

I covered it's head in a mix of fondant (2 of them actualy, satin ice and micmac) and modeling chocolate. I wanted the best of both worlds, and it worked like magic. I worked about 2 1\2 hours on the head only. It was the best part, I can't wait to try something like this again. I made a video of this part by the way.

I used black fondant for the suit and red fondant (plus tylose powder) for the rose. I made the cigar out of fondant and wafer paper. I've airbrushed and hand painted the cake as well.

I'm mad at myself for not making a cake like this before...but what's past is past and I now know for a fact that this is so much fun even though it was intimidating at first.
Well, now I know I can make one next year...yeah!

I'm growing impatient by the minute to see all the creations the community has to show off for this year's contest.