I love to do fun and crazy parties for my kids. Just check out my parties tab to see some of the previous parties I have thrown. My daughter’s birthday this year was completely different for us. We didn’t do a party at home. Instead we went to a bouncy house and inside play structure place called Charlie Safari because that is what she wanted to do. Although I didn’t throw an extravagant party this year, I still did a fun safari birthday cake to match her venue.
It was fun to let someone else take care of all the details and have to only think about the cake. I didn’t take pictures of the cake making process this time around. Instead, I broadcasted the process live on Periscope. Are you on Periscope yet? I’m loving this new social media venue. I was able to show me and my kids baking and decorating the cake together. I even did a live broadcast with a tutorial of how to put the fondant on the cake. If you are on Periscope, I’d love for you to follow me @MeaningfulMamaJ. I’ve most been doing parenting tips, tricks and Q&A. Obviously with the cake design, I’ve also been sharing other parts of our lives.
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Here’s a close up picture of my figurines. I’m only partly satisfied with how they turned out. Our local craft store only had Wilton gum paste, which I’ve never liked. In my opinion, it starts to crack and dry up too fast. I know that’s the goal of gum paste, but when you can’t even work with it in a reasonable amount of time after adding colors, it’s frustrating. I’ve had a lot more success with Satin Ice gum paste. I also prefer Duff brand fondant more than any other store purchased fondant.
Here are some of the other tools I used for this cake:
- Texture for the giraffe spots were made with this cobblestone plastic texture mat.
- The grass was created using a clay extruder, which I’ve been able to use quite a lot in my cake design.
- The zebra stripes were cut from black Wilton sugar sheets. You could easily do this with black fondant too. My big suggestion for black is that you want to buy fondant that has already been colored black. It’s impossible to go from white to black with a normal amount of food coloring. Another option is to buy chocolate fondant andwork to black from there.
If you are interested in cake decorating, I’d encourage you to check out my cakes tab and my posts Cake Making 101 and Cake Making 201 for some of the basics. These posts will link to some of my best recipes that won’t disappoint.
