Jungle Cake

Here is my amazing and adorable birthday cake!!!! I really like it, and I am extremely pleased with the way it turned out. Of course I can't take all (or even most) of the credit for it, as I only helped to make part of it. This was how the agreement went: I was looking through my Cake Boss book and came across the jungle cake once again. I gushed over how cute it was, and how I wanted it for my birthday cake (half jokingly). My boyfriend was there at the time, and I jokingly asked him to make it for me (since I had made a birthday cake for him). He didn't really agree, but didn't say no either, so I took that as a yes. As my birthday came closer, we agreed that we would make the cake together, because he had no experience in cake making or decorating, plus I really wanted to at least help make my own birthday cake, and I was really excited to attempt that jungle cake - it looked like a lot of fun to make! Decorating cakes with someone else is really fun - it gets the job done faster, it makes work easier, it is more fun, you have two opinions instead of one, AND you can make the other person do all of the jobs you don't want to (haha, just kidding - partially). Anyway, my boyfriend and I decorated the cake together, and it went really well. And for someone who claims to have no cake decorating experience, he is pretty good with a piping bag, and icing spatula, and candy clay.

Here is how the cake process went: I baked two chocolate cakes early in the morning; one 9-inch round and one 6-inch round. I used one springform pan and one ovenproof bowl I forgot I had (it is oven safe up to 425◦F - so convenient!). I used my standard chocolate cake recipe that I always use, it makes a two layer size, so I multiplied the recipe by 1 1/2 because I wanted really high cakes. This worked out well. Once the cakes were cool, I wrapped them and froze them for about 1-2 hours, because the Cake Boss states in his book that freezing a freshly baked cake for a short amount of time is one of the best things you can do. It makes cutting the cakes a lot easier. Both cakes were cut in half horizontally and filled with chocolate fudge frosting. It also makes less crumbs when you try to ice the cakes, and eliminates the need for a crumb coat or dirty icing.
Once the cakes were cut, filled, iced, and stacked, the fun part began! We started with the waterfall, outlining the shape with a toothpick and piping waves and filling it in with blue buttercream and a neat crescent-shaped tip. Then I added a green border using my new leaf tip around both of the cakes.Then we piped some trees using leftover fudge filling and the other side of a basketweave tip, and green icing and another crescent tip. We added grass using my new grass tip, and grey rocks, using a sandwich bag with a small hole cut out, because I ran out of piping bags and didn't want to empty the others to wash them. We added a "Happy Birthday Rebecca! :) " at the base of the cake (as you may be able to tell, there are two distinct penmenships there). My boyfriend made the animals almost completely himself using yellow and brown candy clay. I only added a few finishing touchings (mainly the faces). Although Cake Boss uses fancy edible pens and whatnot for the animal's faces, we only used candy clay and a little buttercream for the lion's mane (with my new grass tip). The book featured a giraffe, lion, monkey, elephant, hippo, and zebra, but we stuck to three animals to keep it quicker and easier. Plus, we only had two colors of candy clay to work with.

I am extremely happy and impressed with my birthday cake! I don't really want to chose favorites, but let's just say this birthday cake would definitely be up there as one of my best ever. It was a lot of fun to make (in my opinion), and I don't think it was as difficult as it appeared in the book (only making half of the animals certainly helped that). The hardest part was cutting it! It may not look quite as impressive as the version in Cake Boss, but I know that this cake was made with a lot of pride, care, and love. I guarantee this cake picture is not at all photoshopped (the one in Cake Boss may or may not be). It is also incredibly delicious. It is made from my favorite chocolate cake recipe, a delicious chocolate fudge filling, and my signature buttercream. I much prefer to use buttercream, even though Cake Boss used fondant. I am really happy with my birthday cake this year, and I would like to thank my amazing boyfriend for making it. (I also want to thank my parents for putting up with the mess in the house afterwards.) 
Happy Birthday To Me! :)