This Curious George cake was for a little boy’s 4th birthday party, and it was a total hit with ALL the kids at the party!

Curious George is hangin’ on to balloons, floating above the New York City skyline while the man in the yellow hat drives in traffic. At the party, the number “4″ was placed next to the car for the birthday boy.

This cake is 2 tiers, 14 inch and 8 inch. I used approximately 18 cookie buildings around the bottom tier and 9 or so cookies around the top tier. I hand-cut the cookies to get whimsical looking buildings, and a car cookie cutter for the cars. I “painted” the buildings with food color mixed with clear vanilla extract. Vodka would give the same result; I just used what I had on hand. For the man in the yellow hat, I painted his face using black food color and a tooth pick. And I realize that “in real life”, the man in the yellow hat drives a blue car, not a red car, but I thought the red looked better on the cake.

I am pleased with the look of the buildings, but if I had more time, I would have colored the buildings and cars with color flow (or royal icing…I happen to prefer color flow).

The clouds on the top tier are made from white chocolate. “Happy Birthday Ethan” is written on the cloud using black food color and a tooth pick.

Curious George is a plastic toy I found at Diddams, and the bunch of plastic balloons came from my local cake shop. I used 3 bunches of balloons, and kept them together by sticking the stem of each bunch into a straw, and using the straw to stand the balloons up on the cake.

This cake served ~90 people.