Coolest 4th Birthday Jungle Cake

A friend of mine wanted me to do a cake for her son’s 4th birthday. When they came over to discuss the theme I asked the little boy what he liked best and he promptly told me ‘animals’ and ‘dinosaurs’. Therefore I wanted to create a cake which shows animals and also dinosaurs and came out with this idea.

I baked a large round Madeira cake and filled it with 2 layers vanilla buttercream. Then I scooped out 1/3 of the surface going down some 2cm to create the effect of the river bank. After giving it the right shape I covered the whole cake with white sugarpaste.

With a small paintbrush and some brown food colour diluted with water I painted the middle part of the cake’s surface and I did the same with the rest of the cake but with green colour.

For the sea, I prepared a little royal icing, coloured it blue and put it roughly in the sort of hole created earlier.

As for the animals I modelled out a lion, a tiger lying on a trunk, a monkey, a hippo with her baby, an elephant and a crocodile and placed them all over the cake.

Now I thought where am I going to put the dinosaur?. Suddenly I found a solution. I rolled out some green sugarpaste and placed it around the height of the cake. I made the head and some large white teeth together with the hands and feet and voila!, the dinosaur is popping out from underneath the cake.

As finishing touches I made some rocks with some grey sugarpaste and piped some green icing for the grass.