Thursday, January 7, 2010

Going bananas with the monkeys


When I was a kid I loved monkeys, chimps specifically. I made chimpanzee sounds (pretty authentically scary actually). I begged my Mother for a chimp. She said "No way" as you can imagine. I begged that he could wear diapers and I would change him. Ah...., noooooo. I am very glad that she said no because I have seen a program on PBS about the sad, left behind chimps that people had and then could no longer manage. Poor things! Broke my heart.

But I still have a special fondness for all things monkey, including Curious George. I am just about as happy to watch Curious George on PBS as my kids are.

My youngest daughter seems to feel the same way about monkeys or maybe I have superimposed my love of them on her. So for this birthday I went for it and made this adorable monkey cake that I saw on Martha. Oh, so cute! Ooh ooh ahh ahh!

For all the instructions on constructing a monkey cake, go here.

This is the recipe I used for the cake inside.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake
adapted from Allrecipes here.

1 cup baking cocoa
1 cup boiling water
1 cup butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sour cream

Dissolve cocoa in water; let stand until cool.

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Add vanilla.

Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with sour cream, beating well.

Add cocoa mixture; beat well.

Pour about 3 cups into a 3 quart mixing bowl. Fill two muffin tins 2/3's full (an extra one for any mistakes). And the remainder in any other pans you may want to make. Anything extra you can use for a later project. In my case that would be my other daughters birthday at the end of the month.

This cake is not deeply chocolatey. It is a lighter crumb cake that if you leave in the oven too long will dry out so be careful.

Go easy on the yellow food coloring. I was a bit heavy handed.

10 comments:

ann low said...

This is so cute and pretty! Thanks for sharing.

Mary Bergfeld said...

Too, too cute. I can see her smiling as she saw this. The recipe looks great as well.

kat said...

That is just super cute!

chow and chatter said...

oh this is so cool love it

Barbara Bakes said...

Absolutely adorable! I'm sure she was thrilled!

Donna-FFW said...

Oh that is beyond adorable, so so cute!

Debbie said...

That cake is adorable! I absolutely love it! I'm also a monkey lover - I think gorillas are sweet!

Katy ~ said...

Adorable! Well done!

grace said...

i love monkeys! i love chocolate cake! unfortunately, i'm decorating-challenged and would probably end up with some mutated creature in no way resembling a monkey... :)

Ingrid_3Bs said...

Ooohhooooh Aaaahhhaaahhh in chimp that's Happy belated birthday!

Hope your babygirl had a great one!
~ingrid