Monkey cakes and a mermaid

It's been a busy, fun Easter holiday here, along with two of the small people's birthdays. The Boy decided he wanted a monkey party and so we planned a monkey tea party with family and a couple of friends. The monkey cakes were the main part of the party, along with monkey party hats and plates. I made some fairy cakes which were topped with chocolate ganache, and then the monkey face is made from giant chocolate buttons, white chocolate buttons and choc chips, with an icing pen smile.

The Ginger one decided on a mermaid making party. My friend Pip is a birthday cake genius and helped me come up with the mermaid cake. It's a Victoria sandwich with coloured buttercream icing. I baked part of the cake mix in a greased cereal bowl to make the island shape on the top. Jelly fish sweets are swimming around the sides and icing pens were used for waves and seaweed. The mermaid on the top is my daughter's doll.


Sadly we had to cancel the mermaid making party on the day as the Ginger one woke up poorly, but we will reschedule it for next month sometime. I get to make another mermaid cake but next time I will be using blue roll out icing which has already been coloured. Blue buttercream icing did not work well as it mostly looked grey until I had used over half the bottle of food colouring.

You can see the monkey tea party was a success though!