Teddy Birthday Cake

I can’t believe that it is already a year since little Ted arrived to join our family.

I also can’t believe I spent time trying to work out what to bake to celebrate this auspicious day. You’d think it would be obvious from the start. Teddy would have a 3D Teddy Bear Birthday Cake. I knew that this would be time consuming so I baked the cakes (chocolate mud cake in 2 x pudding bowls, one 1pt and one 2 pt) on Wednesday. I made the cake pops on Thursday, molding some of the mix to create arms, legs, feet, ears, nose and eyes. On Friday afternoon I assembled it and covered it in ganache. Once this had set I covered the whole thing in pink buttercream using a large grass nozzle to create a rough, almost fleecy fur effect. I think this took me around an hour to hour and a half. To be honest I’m not quite sure as we were skyping my sis and her family in Oz at the time. So all rather distracting!

It was fairly plain sailing apart from when my 3yr old Cosy insisted on helping. I let her help stir the pop mix and as I turned my back for a mo she picked up the bowl and dropped it losing half the mix on the floor. I managed to keep my composure and decided to top up with 4 tbsps Nutella which in retrospect really added to the flavour. I explained to Cosy that she musn’t pick the bowl up when she was helping me.

 Then I let her crack the eggs for the coconut layer cake I was preparing. She has a great one-handed technique, which works well as long as it is over a separate bowl so I can fish the shell out. She had cracked the 8 eggs I needed. I was just leaning behind her to grab a spatula when she tried to tip the egg bowl into the Kitchen Aid. 1 of the eggs went into that bowl whilst the other 7 slid down the kitchen cupboards before pooling in a puddle on the floor. Once again I told her that she was NOT allowed to pick up the bowl. I let her crack the eggs once again but left doing anything else until after she had gone to bed.

Sometimes it’s difficult because I really want to encourage her passion for baking but it does always make so much work for me and I am running a business. I try not to get cross though as it is always well intentioned.

In the end the layer cake turned out fine and I also piped some simple flower cookies and some pink rose cupcakes. I also filled a couple of glass trifle bowls with pink and white marshmallows.

 I was really pleased with how the cake table turned out with a few simple decorations.