This Ladybug cake was made entirely from scratch with the exception of the black fondant. The cake base is a fluffy “bakery style” white cake recipe – found after years of experimenting with more traditional pound cake recipes. This recipe calls for buttermilk and vegetable oil, which seems to make the difference. I used a soccer ball pan to make the body of the ladybug, therefore it is not a filled cake (put parchment paper in the bottom of the pan – cake pops right out). Nobody minded since the cake was so moist. The head of the ladybug was made using a smaller circular pan mold. I placed the two pieces together with icing, covered the body with fondant first, then the head.
The fondant is all colored using Wilton paste colors. I knew that making red fondant would be quite difficult. Since the cake was for my daughter, I was perfectly fine with it being more of a “hot pink” ladybug and she certainly didn’t seem to mind! The leaves were made from fondant as well. After cutting them out and veining them with a gum paste mold, I laid them over a wooden spoon to dry so that they would have a curve shape. For the white flowers, I cut out small circles with a tiny cookie cutter and pinched the ends to make petals, smushed them all together and put a small pink circle on top to hold it in place.
The eyelashes and smile are simply thin strips of white fondant. I added the crease in the ladybug itself by using the thin flat side of an orange peeler. Finished it off by cutting out circles of store-bought black fondant for the ladybug’s spots!
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