When it came to the cake for my 22nd birthday party, no one else in my family was going to be able to make me a custom cake. So I set about doing my own. I’m a Zoology student with big plans to spend my life doing conservation work. My dream has always been to work in big cat conservation in the long run (though meantime I’m happy doing conservation work here in Australia) and I’m known for my love of big cats. So really, it was the obvious choice.

The cupcakes were marbled red velvet and vanilla.

The cake is choc peppermint ripple cake, covered in chocolate icing. My usual. Cept this one was higher and drizzled with white chocolate icing, too. The sides were covered with white choc paw prints, which were a pain in the bum, I’ll give you the hot tip. Figures on the top were made of rolled fondant, as were the blossoms.

The hardest part was making them look convincingly like big cats. Because I had yet to see a convincing 3D fondant figure of a tiger, hadn’t ever seen one of a cheetah and only one that passed for a lion. Most of the time they either looked terrible, or they just looked like bears. So I compromised – I gave the tigers and cheetahs pointy ears rather than round like their life-like counterparts. The lions had round because I figured the mane was identifying enough.

Half the cupcakes were covered in cream cheese icing, the other half in buttercream.

Except the cheetahs kept being called leopards, as I predicted they would be, because it was hard to get them cheetah-like. I couldn’t really make them streamlined, and I figured if I did the cheetah “tear drop streaks” it would just look weird.

Now for the cupcake tier. There were 12 of the big cats, and the rest were covered in big cat colour themed roses.

I decided upon unusual patty pans and once getting them home and trying them out on my tier I discovered they were too big! So, after much stressing and “zomg what do I do?”s, I made my own ‘tier’ from odds and ends around the house.

Just have to include the inside of the ripple cake. I made it really tall mainly due to the sheer number of guests expected.

I had a hard time picking what photos to show, so if you wanna look at more I’ve posted them here on my Facebook. (I’m not sure if that will work – the album is public so it should). If, for some reason, it doesn’t take you to the right page, it photos starts on page 5.