Photo from Parenting.com
Recipe and Instructions
by Karen Tack
Ingredients:
- 1 (9-inch) round cake
- 2 chocolate-covered doughnuts
- ½ can (1 cup) vanilla frosting
- Red food coloring
- 1 can (16 oz) chocolate frosting
- ½ cup chocolate sprinkles
- 2 brown M&M's or black jelly beans
- 2 miniature York peppermint patties
- 1 chocolate Twizzler
- A bread knife
- A serving platter
- 2 resealable sandwich-size plastic bags (Ziploc)
- Kitchen shears or scissors
- Place the cake on a clean work surface. Using the bread knife, trim a 1 ½-inch triangle-shaped notch from opposite sides of the cake (see template). Discard scraps. Place the trimmed cake onto a serving platter.
- Cut ½ inch from one side of each doughnut.
- Spoon ¼ cup of the untinted vanilla frosting into a resealable plastic bag.
- Add enough red food coloring to 2 Tbsp of the vanilla frosting to tint it red and spoon it into a separate resealable plastic bag.
- Add a few drops of the red food coloring to the remaining vanilla frosting to tint it a pale pink.
- Spread the chocolate frosting onto the top and sides of the cake, avoiding the lower half of the monkey's face.
- Spread the pale-pink frosting into a kidney bean–shaped area over the monkey's mouth, chin, and cheeks, as pictured.
- Press the chocolate sprinkles into the forehead, the top of the head, and the underside of the monkey's chin.
- Press the trimmed edges of the doughnuts onto the cake for the monkey's ears. Press the M&M's or the jelly beans into the center of the cake to make the monkey's nostrils.
- Snip a very small corner from each bag of frosting. Pipe a red frosting line onto the pink part of the cake for the monkey's smile.
- Pipe 2 white circles onto the top of the cake for the monkey's eyes and press the peppermint candies into them. Add a dab of white frosting for the sparkle in each eye, as pictured.
- Snip the chocolate Twizzler into thin 2-inch strands with kitchen shears or clean scissors and insert them into the top of the cake for the monkey's hair.
