As with most of my days “off”, I spent this past Friday making another SweetElement cake! While I throughly enjoy making cakes for commission, the joy of making cakes for friends and family that leaves me total creative control from start to finish is something that just can’t be matched.

The inspiration for this cake came to me simply by thinking of things that my friend Jon loves … beer & monkeys! The cake itself was a devil’s food cake filled with cookies & cream buttercream, frosted in chocolate buttercream and decorated in fondant and royal icing. The “sand” was a combination of crushed cookies. Total height was ~12″.

Initially, I thought it would be a cute idea to theme the cake around the 4th of July since we were going over for a 4th of July BBQ (even though the party was on the 5th), so I made red white & blue monkeys as accessories. My favorite of the three was the red stripe drinking blue monkey with his hand on his little beer belly — too cute!

The red monkey sporting a “420″ um, “plant inspired” shirt is happily munching some chips and smokin’ a little something ;p

Here’s a view of the bottlecap and the three monkeys … including the white Jamaican monkey bearing the Jamaican flag. (There’s also a secret brown monkey hiding incognito in the back.)

And the finished Red Stripe cake ~ monkeys and all!