Make a Monkey Cake

" Need a fun birthday cake idea? Try this! I just know any kid would love this adorable cake. I've just got a 1-layer cake here. You can use a cake mix if you'd like. I just made an 8-inch layer, but you could use a 9-inch layer if you want to. Then, I've got some chocolate frosting, which I'm just gonna frost over the whole cake. Now, you can use homemade frosting or you could make it really simple and buy your frosting. When I frost a cake, I really like to use an offset spatula where it's kinda bent, but if you have a regular spatula, that will work fine. All right. Once I'm getting close to the end, I'm gonna make 1 last swipe around the top and the sides, just to make sure I've got it all covered. I've got some crisp rice cereal here; make sure it's the chocolate kind. And I'm gonna pat that on to my cake on the top and sides, but when you put it on the top, make sure you only go about an inch and a half around the edge. This is gonna kinda be like the monkey fur, and you wanna get really generous with this `cause it adds a really nice flavor and great crunch to that cake. And then I take a bunch of it and just kind of lay it around the edge. Just fill up that edge, and then just take your hands and bring it up and press it into the sides of the cake. And here again, you wanna be nice and generous with it so that it covers it all really well. So, the face frosting is just a really simple recipe. You'd just have to take about a half cup of white frosting and about 2 tablespoons of peanut butter and mix that together. And what I think is really simple is to put it in a little plastic bag and clip off a corner. You wanna clip off a fairly good piece of the corner and then you can simply pipe around the edge of that circle. To me, it's easier to do this than to try to spread it evenly on that because when you spread it, you might take up some of that cereal, and you don't want that. You want your face to be nice, creamy, and white. Just kind of spread it smooth. So for the eyes, I'm simply gonna take some chocolate kisses and put them upside down; just stick them right into the frosting where you want your eyes to be. Pipe on the nose and the mouth. Make sure you give them a really ice big smile. Now to finish it off, you're gonna add some ears. So, here I've just got a really simple chocolate cookie, cut it in half and stick them along the sides for the ears. And then a fun way to garnish this cake is to peel a banana and stick it out on the top, like he's wearing a hat. This is really cute and simple, and so quick to make."