No Monkeying around!

My very first cake for class 2 of Wilton course 1 (4 months ago).  It's chocolate cake with chocolate chip chunks. Needless to say, I learned two things. First, making a character cake requires simple recipes. I decided to go one step further and bake the cake with chocolate chips. Yeah.... what I didn't expect was for the top half foot of the monkey to be stuck to the pan since the chocolate sunk to the bottom of the pan, creating more weight and upon flipping the pan over, monkey was footless. (Panic #1). Second, I learned that mistakes, CAN be fixed with a piping bag, tip and buttercream icing. Voila! Monkey's foot has been repaired :) It was my first time, piping icing onto a character cake. I started out squeezing stars the size of Maple leafs (Panic#2) and eventually learned that piping stars is all about pressure and control of lifting the bag. By the time I finished piping the monkey, I wished I had more cake to pipe! Since I don't have children (yet), I decided to bring my cake to work and share with my colleagues. The admiration for the cake lasted 2 seconds and was consumed within the hour!