Chocolate-iced teddy bear cake

Serves:

Ingredients

• 125g unsalted butter, softened
• half a cup caster sugar
• half a teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 and a half cups self-raising flour
• half a cup (125mL) milk

Icing (optional)

• 2 cups icing sugar
• half a cup cocoa
• Coconut, smarties, writing gels to decorate

Method

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a teddy bear cake tin or silicon pan (mine is 26cm x 21cm x 4cm). In an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until pale in colour and creamy.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating for about a minute between each addition. Add the vanilla essence and beat until combined.

Sift flour and add half to butter mixture with half the milk, mix until well combined. Repeat with remaining flour and milk.

Pour into cake tin or silicon pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before turning onto serving plate.

To make icing, sift flour and cocoa together and add enough hot water to make a smooth icing. Spread cake with icing and decorate with coconut on the ears, smartie buttons and writing gels to draw in features. I moved my cake onto the serving plate after the icing had set and it cracked be warned! Or you could use a butter icing.

Notes:

• I have this fabulous new SiliconWare teddy bear pan (see photo), which means you dont have to cut out complicated shapes and stick them together to get your teddy bear. My kids loved the teddy shape and had great fun deciding which bit they were going to eat first. I did feel sorry for Ted as I was amputating his limbs!
• If you have a teddy bear pan with detail (indented smiley face etc), you may prefer not to ice or decorate.
• Recipe created by Melissa Hughes for Kidspot.

Serving Suggestions

Note