Here are some photos of the cake and such:
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| Big monkey cake for the grown-ups - recipe below! |
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| Little monkey cake (w/ alternate frosting) for the birthday boy! |
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| SMASHED! |
I had a lot of fun making these! The cake recipe is one I found on Smitten Kitchen - I've included it below. I did one and a half times the recipe so that I had enough to make an extra 12 cupcakes and 3 mini cakes in my Pampered Chef one-cup glass baking bowls. (One of these was the little boy's cake shown above.)
3 1/2 cups (14 3/8 ounces or 406 grams) cake flour
2 teaspoons (10 grams) baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons (8 grams) baking soda
3/4 teaspoon (5 grams) salt
3/4 teaspoon (2 grams) cinnamon
1 cup (2 sticks, 8 ounces or 227 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup (7 ounces or 200 grams) sugar
1 cup (7 5/8 ounces or 218 grams) packed golden brown sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups mashed or pureed very ripe bananas (5 to 6 large)
6 tablespoons (3 1/4 ounces or 91 grams) sour cream or (weight will vary) plain yogurt
2 teaspoons (10 ml) vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line the bottoms of 2 9-inch round cake pans with parchment paper, then coat the paper and sides of pans with butter and flour, or a nonstick spray. [You'll also want to butter and flour 3 muffin cups or ramekins.]
Whisk cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a medium bowl and set aside. Using electric mixer, beat butter and both sugars in large bowl until blended. Beat in eggs one at a time, then bananas, sour cream, and vanilla. Beat in dry ingredients in two additions just until combined. Divide batter among two pans; you’ll want approximately 5 cups of batter per pan. [Fill your 3 muffin cups or ramekins two-thirds of the way up with batter and divide remaining batter among your 2 9-inch pans.]
Bake cake until tester inserted into center of each layer comes out clean, about 40 to 45 minutes. [Muffin cups should bake for approximately 15 to 20 minutes. Please watch them carefully.] Cool each layer in its pan for 15 minutes before flipping out onto a rack to cool the rest of the way.
Buttercream Frosting - this was a French buttercream that my pastry chef sister made for me! I split the recipe into 2/3 and 1/3 - the 2/3 got an additional 5 oz of melted semisweet chocolate to make the brown, and then the 1/3 got 1 spoonful of the chocolate frosting and some drops of yellow food coloring to make the yellow part of the monkey face. The link above is to a similar recipe, although I can't promise the niceness of having someone else make it for you!
Alternate Frosting
I didn't want Joseph to have a ton of sugar, so I mixed cream cheese and applesauce together for the frosting on his cake. (Joe I says it tasted pretty good!) I then decorated with leftover chocolate buttercream.
All in all we had a good time. Joseph still went to bed at a reasonable time, even with staying up to 'open' his presents (ok, Mom and cousins might have helped him a bit with that). I'm so proud of him and of making it a whole year as a mom! (Without serious injuries! haha)
