Zebra baby belly cake

There is a funny origin to this cake. One of my very best friends was getting ready to PCS (for those non military folks that means permanent change of station or moving) and I was very sad. She had recently found out she was pregnant with her 7th....yes I said 7th child. She had yet to find out what we would learn the following week...she was having a girl!! We happened to be browsing the Internet for random things...one of our favorite past times....and she told me that I HAD to make this cake for someone. I said "why not for you?" and the adventure begins.
I used my trusty dark chocolate cake recipe and discovered that to appropriately make the chest and belly regions I needed to use certain pans. I used the Wilton ball pan set for the...UMMM chest....and a large mixing bowl for the belly. BE WARNED...if you use a mixing bowl to bake in, it MUST be metal or glass oven safe and the outside WILL bake much faster than the middle. There are things out there to combat this but I wasn't aware of these little tricks until afterwards. UGH. It wound up absolutely perfect in the end and I hand painted the zebra stripes using black food color and vanilla extract.
Such a cute cake but ultimately lead to me making a couple of other female shaped cake that had much less clothing on. Those posts will follow and I will be sure to make them as EXPLICIT in case you are viewing this with impressionable people.