Ladybird Cake

Last week I got to make a proper birthday cake, I say proper as I feel like I've kind of lost my baking mojo the last month or so - but come on now, it's Christmas! So I must pull myself out of it, so making this ridiculously cute ladybird cake is definitely helping me get there.

This particular cake was for my mum's friend's birthday...and can you guess what her favourite thing is? I knew when I was asked to make her a cake there was only one thing it would be. As it was a birthday cake I made it a chocolate sponge one, I don't know why but I just feel like it's a bit more special to make birthday cakes when they're chooclate, with chocolat buttercream too of course.

The cake itself was baked in a Pyrex glass mixing bowl, it did take a little while to bake and I lined the bowl with foil to make sure the cake didn't stick to the bowl. Once cool I cut the cake in half and filled and dirty iced it with chocolate buttercream. I covered the whole of the cake in red fondant I coloured with Christmas Red Sugarflair food colouring paste and I made the head, spots, feelers and eyes from black fondant dyed with Liquorice Sugarflair food colouring paste. To make the head I used a breakfast bowl to cut it out, worked perfectly!

I actually had a round cutter that I used for the spots and eyes...it's actually pretty rare that I have a mould/cutter that I need so I normally have to improvise. To make the pupils I cut out the fondant with piping nozzles and the feelers I just used the left over fondant to roll into long sausages - seriously DIY but it worked so well..you don't need lots of fancy cutters and tools you can always various lids/cups/cutlery around the kitchen to decorate cakes with.

I actually think it came out really well, almost too cute for words I would say.

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