Portfolio: Sock Monkey Cake

Happy Saturday!  Today we celebrated the first birthday of my cousin Jeff's twin boys, Wyatt and Garrett.  Their mom, Abbi, asked me to make a cake centered around a monkey theme, specifically sock monkeys.  If you're not familiar with sock monkeys, these vintage stuffed critters derive their name from the sock material used to make them.  The shape of socks contributes to their unique shape as well.

We opted not to make a sock monkey shaped cake, but instead a two tiered primary colored cake with two smash cakes with sock monkeys on them for the boys.  Here's how it turned out:

And here is a close up of the smash cakes:

Each smash cake was a block with the first letter of their names on the sides and a sock monkey on top in a different color.

The boys may be identical twins, but they are as different as can be!  Wyatt was neater than his brother and wasn't such a fan of the whole experience after a bit.  His brother Garrett on the other hand, took the concept of "smash cake" to a whole new level!

Dude...you gonna eat that?

Wyatt preferred to share his cake with the dog!

What's everybody looking at?

All in all, it was pretty fun.  I think I will post a tutorial later on how to do argyle patterns in buttercream, but I need to tweak my method a bit first.  There weren't any problems in terms of executions with this cake, just some timing issues thanks to a wee little person who felt that they didn't need to go to bed, lol.  Such is the life of a parent of a toddler!

Happy Baking,
Kelly