This cake was ordered for a little boy who was turning 3 last week.  His mother wanted a modest celebration cake to share with his preschool class with the image of his favorite character–Curious George!  She asked for a simple design on a square cake with a picture of Curious George on top and fondant balloons spelling out his name.

I did the image as a frozen buttercream transfer. I found a picture I liked, sized it to fit the cake, and traced it onto waxed paper with buttercream icing. It’s almost like making the picture in reverse, as you put the details “closest” to you down first (i.e., the face, etc) and build up the icing on top of that. In other words, the whole thing is flipped over in the end, with the buttercream that’s directly on the waxed paper being the image you see on the cake (make sense…?  Probably not….).

During the process, the entire thing was put into the freezer in between colors to keep the buttercream from smearing together…thus the term “frozen buttercream transfer.” It’s actually an ingenious way to get any picture you want on a cake without piping it on freehand.

Anyway, it’s a 2-layer 9″ square chocolate cake iced with vanilla buttercream. After transferring the image to the frosted cake, I added green grass to the top and colorful buttercream balloons on the sides.  The wired balloons, letters and number are all made from homemade marshmallow fondant.

It was a fun cake to make, albeit a bit challenging to get the little face just right.  He’s such an iconic image with a face everyone recognizes, right!?  Not just any old monkey! I mostly wanted the kids to know who it was (and they did!).

Happy birthday, Little Neil!  I hope you had a great 3rd birthday!