Designing a Cake: Jungle Cake

When you're designing a cake, there are a handful of items that are really important to take into consideration. I'm Rachel Tupple, and in this lesson, I'm going to share a few tips and tricks for designing a cake and how to place your items appropriately. So when you start to think about how to lay out a cake, it's really important to think about, um, where your eye is going to go initially when you look at the cake. So just do a quick sketch and have an understanding of how to balance your cake. Thought it would be fun to make a little jungle cake.

So we know that your eye is gonna look at the thing that is most prominent first. and then sort of trail along and look at the other items. And in a cake design like a jungle cake, we have sort of this. Prominent, uh, palm tree that's gonna sit at the front and it's off to the side, so we've got something that is going to basically be on one side of our cake, so we have to balance it with something else on the other side of the cake. And you don't want to balance it with something the same size.

You actually want to balance it with something that's at least half or less than the item that's on one side, and that just forms a triangle. So maybe we'll put our little lion over there, rough sketch, but this sort of balances the palm tree, the larger item on the other side, so. We have now made a triangle, and that's how you, uh, look at things is basically in shapes. Your eye is drawn to something that's very large, and it sees in shapes even though you don't realize you're looking at shapes when you're looking at a scene or a background, and that's what your eye is drawn to. So we have our triangle, and, um, then you want to kind of fill in things from there.

We have, um, in this case, we have some leaves and some flowers. Uh, we'll put some different items down here. This is gonna be our color pops, but then we also want a color pop at the top, and the way that I think I'm gonna do that is actually by putting our monkey right behind our palm tree. Um, he is going to, uh, continue that triangle, and we'll put a couple flowers with him just to have another pop of color at the top. And as you can see, the center is sort of open.

Um, there's a couple of things that you can do when you're designing to, uh, avoid things that are just completely blank in the middle, um, and that is to add a little bit of background. Um, so in this case we've got some other types of leaves. We'll just put a few more leaves kind of behind that tree. And we have, um, some writing that we're gonna put in here, and so maybe we could either add it on a leaf or we could have it trailing down here. Um, with the rest of the colorful items, um, there's a couple of different options.

But balance is key, and if you can build in a triangle, um, that's usually the best-case scenario, and it can be any triangle you. It doesn't have to be; in this case we're really more of a right triangle, and you could certainly do something that looks more like a pyramid and go vertically. You just want to try to build in something that has balance, and a triangle is almost always, uh, in balance in that it has 3 points, and they're all kind of opposite of each other. So, if you think of it from that perspective, it's a little easier for placement and design. So, let's pull our cake in and let's go ahead and get this jungle cake, uh, put together.

Uh, the first thing I'm gonna look for is any imperfections in my fondant. And I know I have a seam and I have a couple of nicks back here. So, you've got two choices. You can either cover them or you can, uh, put them in the back, and nobody's gonna see them. As long as you can't walk all the way around your cake, which most of the time the cake's up against a wall or in a corner, um, everybody puts cake in the corner, uh, but it's fine because it actually gives you, uh, some flexibility with your design.

So, um, your choice how you want to do that, uh, I think I'm actually gonna use it to my advantage. And cover it. In this case. Now, we just have a little bit of water and a paintbrush that's gonna help adhere some of these items to the cake itself. Um, water makes sugar really sticky, and it just kind of works perfectly.

So, I'm gonna set that there on my little seam and just press it to the cake. And that should hold. If for any reason it doesn't hold, maybe your item's too heavy, and then you can always use a little bit of piping gel or edible glue. Um, so I like to start by adding in kind of my main details first, just to kind of see how it's gonna play out. You know, if I, if I were to put my lion over here, um, we could certainly do that too because we're still in a triangle, but then we would need to balance it.

Um, and if we put it here, that's in the center, and our monkey's gonna go here, so he's lined up. So you really want to make sure that your spacing is good as well. Um, that is an important part of the process, for sure. Just thinking about how large your objects are, how that comes together. Give it just a little push up against that fondant, and you're good to go.

Now, this would work with a buttercream cake, a fondant cake, doesn't matter, um, whatever, uh, whatever you have. is good. And um this monkey, he's a little heavy but not too heavy. Uh, he doesn't need any sort of support underneath. And by the way, if you're interested in learning how to make any of these items, we have several other lessons available, so don't hesitate to peek around the site.

I almost always, uh, put my larger items on first. I start to fill the background a little bit, and then I start with some of my colorful items. Um, those almost always are the last thing that I put on because they, uh, are that little pop, uh, that, that oftentimes we need. All right. I think from a balanced perspective, let's go ahead and get some of our leaves on.

Now, creating the leaves of the, uh, palm tree sometimes can be a little challenging because we don't actually have, uh, the wiring right now. Um, if I were gonna create something where this was like completely sticking out, it would definitely have wires, but this is just sort of a fun cartoony cake. We're not going for anything. Too wild and crazy. Let's see if we can get that to hold.

So you can use the leaves to your advantage here with some of its, uh, little curvatures and kind of tuck things a little bit. There we go. All right. And sometimes I actually like to, um, you know, use, so some of these have dried ahead of time, some of these are a little softer. So I can use the softer ones to kind of bend and do what I want them to do.

And in this case, we want to give a little bit of depth to our palm tree. And kind of let that monkey kind of come behind the tree. Great. And then I like to sometimes just use a few little pieces to kind of add to, uh, the, the, uh look of the tree as well. You don't have to have full pieces every time.

This one will just kind of cover our stem that's here. Great. And we have our colorful pops. So we've got two colorful pops that we're going to put on. Uh, we've got some lettering for the name and then we have some florals.

And so I want my eye to be drawn to the name. Uh, so I'm going to put that front and center down here by the leaf, and what that's going to do is draw our eye back down to the bottom. It's kind of like how the animals would be walking along the bottom of the, the jungle as well. So it also makes sense from a, uh, technical, I guess, uh, perspective. Sort of lead you over to the lion, kind of like they're walking in line.

And then, of course, our last thing is going to be our colorful flowers. Now I'm just going to tuck a few in sort of behind the monkey, then I'll do a couple in front of the monkey, and really this is just a way to again draw your eye back up to the monkey. He's just up there hanging out, having fun in the trees. And let's put. A little something by our lion just for some colorful green, and then we'll get some flowers in there as well.

Now I love using some of my broken pieces as well, even though they're not a full leaf. Uh, sometimes, um, it's to our advantage when things break because they, uh, they give us sort of a different, uh, perspective and a different look. So don't throw these out, don't waste them, tuck them in somewhere. I'm actually going to take the stem off of that, and then it, it sort of looks like it belongs that way. But it's a great way to use up the pieces that you've worked so hard on.

All right, couple more flowers and this cake is done. Give the lion a little something to sniff along the way. And you can see, uh, that I've also worked somewhat in a triangle with my color pieces as well. And again, your colorful pieces are there to guide your eye. So, as you are working through the design, you sort of, when you're—you’re gonna see something that pops out at you first, which is going to be the monkey and the tree, and then it sort of colorfully leads your eye over to the lion.

And then you sort of see the whole image as one as well. So, the composition of a cake is important when you're putting all of these elements and pieces together. It's always great to start with the sketch, use your triangle method, and you will be in good shape for designing all of your cakes.