Modeling Chocolate and Monkeys

Remember how much fun it was as a kid to make animals out of clay? Not much has changed for me, it’s still fun to create animals. I made some monkeys, but instead of using clay, these monkeys were made from modeling chocolate. Those years of playing with clay as a kid turned out to be a useful experience for this project.

This cake was made for a two-year-old boy who loves watching Five Little Monkeys on YouTube.  I had no idea how I was going to make a cake like this, but not knowing how to do something has never stopped me from jumping in with both feet.

I started in the usual way — searching for and collecting ideas on Pinterest. My cake isn’t professional quality, but it made the child squeal with delight when he saw it, so I considered it a success. I think it takes practice to be skillful at this. My first monkey took a lot longer to put together than the last one. Working with the teeny tiny parts was the hardest for me. I’m not sure if I had too many fingers or not enough when I tried to put those little pieces together.

The bottom portion is a 9 x 13-inch cake. The bed and pillow were cut from an 8 x 8-inch cake. The cakes were frosted with chocolate buttercream. The headboard and monkeys were made from all modeling chocolate, but the bedspread is made from 50% modeling chocolate and 50% fondant. I looked at several tutorials on how to make the monkeys. The one I found most helpful is found here.