My client was hosting her daughter’s fifth birthday party at CuriOdyssey (http://www.curiodyssey.org/) and wanted a cake that reflected the party location. CuriOdyssey is a very cool place in San Mateo, CA that’s a museum with kid-sized exhibitions and a small zoo with animals that have been rescued/rehabilitated and aren’t able to return to the wild (many of the animals are native to California). The birthday girl wanted an “animal theme” for her cake and the birthday mom sent me this cake for inspiration: http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1781787/happy-little-farm. Specifically, she liked the frog and wanted to include one holding a heart like in the photo and she wanted some of the animals at CuriOdyssey featured on the cake (badger, coyote, owl, bobcat, frog, duck, birds, etc). CuriOdyssey also has this insanely cool bee exhibit and we wanted to include some bees on the cake as well.

The tricky part for me was trying to figure out a way to incorporate that many animals into a small-ish (9") cake without it looking cluttered. Then I saw a photo roll by on Facebook and decided to throw the tree in to anchor everything together. For the life of me, I can’t remember who made the cake that inspired the tree in my cake here. If anyone knows, please leave a comment and I’ll link to it (it was a Valentine themed cake that had a tree on top and a girl sitting on a swing hanging from one of the branches— so adorable!).

This cake is a vegan chocolate cake with chocolate filling. Everything is handmade and edible.