Monkeys on a Climbing Wall Cake

This cake was sour cream chocolate cake with vanilla bean Italian meringue buttercream. The party was at a climbing gym and the birthday boy wanted a monkey theme so the two got combined. It makes sense as monkeys are known to climb!

The cake drum is covered in fondant that is textured to look like wood grain and then painted with brown food coloring to look like wood stain. The monkeys were made with fondant.

The cake was a 6" square tier and an 8" square tier but I stacked them off centre to make one tall climbing wall on one side of the cake. The cake was carved to give it texture and I used a mixture of cake crumbs and icing to add additional texture before covering in fondant and adding fondant hand grips and ropes. A few fondant bananas scattered around finished it off!