---

Giraffe Birthday Cake

---

The Story behind this Cake

---

 

 I made this for my brother's 30th birthday last Friday, and it left everyone in awe and amazement. 

One layer German chocolate cake, one layer dark chocolate cake, lemon curd buttercream filling, covered with fondant and hand painted to look like giraffe skin, hand made and hand painted mother and child giraffes, branch/leaves and surrounded in cookie crumbs. 

Both the mother giraffe and the baby giraffe were free hand by me, no molds used at all. I got permission from the original creator Sharon Wee and I modified her cake to my version once I got the all-clear from her. Plus, I had originally wanted to do something with an African theme for my brother since we (my siblings and I) were born and raised in Africa and we have strong emotional ties and beautiful memories of it still....so when I saw Sharon's cake featured a few months ago, I knew this is what I wanted to make for him. And believe me, he, his wife, our parents, our guests, the children, EVERYBODY, took a million photos and I got AMAZING compliments and such from everyone. The cake's original recipe I also tweaked a little and used buttermilk instead. So that gave it a richer and a little more dense quality to it. 
It was DE-LI-CI-OUS.
Since beginning my caking page I've wanted to hand paint on cakes and have done so a few times, and with this cake, I knew it would be easy to get the shading and patterns just right. You can't go wrong with giraffe patches, right? 
A lot of people I read about in the caking world use vodka when they mix their colors for hand painting but I never want to use that and only use lemon juice or water. For the giraffe cake, I used water with my colors, got my regular paint brushes (from a craft store) and used a larger/wider brush to completely cover the cake with the base color, and then a small/narrower brush to paint on the patterns. I hand made the giraffes and let them dry for two days before I hand painted them. The cake I did a day before the party because I knew it would need that long to dry out. :)

Share a cake by Sweet Dreams

---

---