My husband’s cousin called and asked me to make a kids luau themed monkey cake with palm trees and to make the decorations out of candy. OK I’m up for the challenge! She sent me a few pics of different ideas or different candy the decorations could be made out of and I took it from there.
First I just baked 2 rectangular cakes, iced them with butter cream and stacked them and iced them again in white. I would recommend another color like light blue instead to make it pop. Then I crumbled some graham crackers to make “sand”. I made all of the decorations on top out of candy from the dollar store. The palm trees and monkeys were made out of tootsie rolls, then I got a cow tail candy and made the inside lighter shade for the monkey and the other skinnier palm tree trunk. I make the palm tree leaves out of laffy taffy and just cut the edges with a knife to make them look like palms.
I couldn’t find just green laffy taffy or anything else so had to buy a pack of them and just use the green ones. The coconuts are just caramel malt balls and the bananas are banana candies. I rolled the tootsie rolls out then just formed different shape balls to make the monkeys, it was waaaaayyyy easier than I expected, then took a toothpick and pocked holes for the eyes and nose. To add a little extra decoration, I took the left over malt balls and bananas and put them around the sides of the cake.
Everyone LOVED the cake and my husband’s 4 year old nephew had the biggest smile and was shocked when he saw the cake!!
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