Ladybug Cake & Ladybug Pretzels

In Vivienne’s ladybug 1st birthday party post, I promised a quick post giving an overview of how I constructed the cake and pretzels. I’m making good on that promise before I forget!

I drew tons of inspiration from doing a search for “ladybug cake” on Google Images. I knew early on that I wanted to do something 3D, and since I had a bit of experience making rounded cakes (thanks to this fire helmet cake I did a few years ago), I felt pretty confident I could tackle this one.

Here’s how it turned out:

In determining how to bake the cakes and piece this guy (gal?) together, I took out a bunch of cake pans and glass bowls and did my best to stack them and estimate size and proportions. I ended up settling on a 1-quart Pyrex glass mixing bowl, a 9″ round cake pan, and a 2-cup round Pyrex glass container (normally used for food storage). Note: I also made a 6″ round to use for my smash cake.

After Googling the crap out of “baking cakes in Pyrex glass bowls” to refresh my memory (I could not for the life of me remember exactly how I did it to make the fire helmet cake), I got to work.

To make all of these cakes, I made three batches of cake using this recipe (but you could make whatever cake recipe you’d like). I filled all bowls/pans about 2/3 of the way full, like you would with any normal cake pan. With the big 1-quart Pyrex mixing bowl, I took a cue from people on the internet and added my Wilton flower nail, inserting it into the top of the batter. Having the piece of metal in the middle supposedly helps the middle of the cake bake more evenly. In the process, my cake-in-a-bowl ended up baking up over the flower nail, so it remained inside of the cake until I was cutting it at the party—just FYI.

While the cakes in the 9″ and 6″ cake pans baked like normal (obviously)—and the one in the small 2-cup round Pyrex dish baked within a reasonable amount of time as well—the cake in the 1-quart Pyrex glass mixing bowl ended up taking well over an hour to be done. To bake that cake, I also took more advice from the internet and dropped the oven temperature down 25 to 50 degrees. You want to bake it slower since you need the middle to be done without completely frying the outside edges. It’s a delicate balance. After about 45 minutes of baking, I checked the cake every 10 minutes, then once we were past an hour, I checked it every 5 minutes. I knew the cake was finally done when the top stopped “jiggling” every time I rattled the oven rack, and when the top of the cake sprung back upon my pressing it gently. It did end up being slightly crispy on the outside edges, but it wasn’t a detriment. It was still really good cake!

Side note: Icing. I made all of my buttercream icing in advance. Deciding how much frosting I need to make—and how much I need of each color—is by far the most stressful part of cake baking for me. I once had an incident (with my fire truck cake) when I was thisclose to running out of red icing, and it gave me heart palpitations. Back then, I ended up making it work by adding a strip of gray across the top of the truck (and making it wider than I originally planned), but since then, I’ve tended to be overly cautious about the amount of icing needed. So… with this big ladybug cake and the smash cake? I ended up making FOUR batches of Wilton buttercream. It was a lot, and I ended up having a pretty decent amount leftover (red, particularly), but I regret nothing. Because you DO NOT want to run out of colored icing in the middle of decorating a cake. The chances of you matching the exact color again? Slim!

Anyway, I digress.

After the cakes all cooled, it was time to put the pieces together and start decorating. Now, I don’t have any pictures of this process, so you’ll have to bear with my (continued) wordy descriptions.

First? The easy part. I placed the 9″ round cake on my platter, then smothered the top of it with thinned out buttercream icing (white). I then stacked my 1-quart Pyrex bowl cake on top of it. From there, I took my 2-cup Pyrex bowl cake and positioned it on the front of the body to make the head. Here, I had to do a tiny bit of carving, just cutting off a little bit of the side of the cake closest to the body in order for the head (which I had positioned sort of at an angle) to sit flush against the body. Once I had a good fit, I “glued” the head onto the body with more buttercream, then used cake dowels to secure it even further. I stuck four dowels through the head and into the body at various angles.

From there, it was pretty simple cake decorating. I started by giving the entire thing a crumb coat—a really thin coat of icing; you can typically still see the cake through the icing, it’s that thin. The ladybug body in red, the head in black. Then, I used a small round cookie cutter to “trace” the spots in the crumb coat on the body. You could use any appropriately sized round object for this, but obviously a cookie cutter makes it easy. I pressed it into the cake with enough pressure to leave marks, making the pattern of the spot all over the body.

I then used one of my Wilton round tips to divide the body in half, making the line you see down the ladybug’s back. I swapped that tip out for a star tip and got to work filling in the spots and covering the ladybug’s head. Before completely covering the head, I paused to make the face. I traced spots for the eyes, then spread some white icing over them. Then I took my pink icing—which I unintentionally made a darker shade of pink than I meant to, oh well!—and drew the mouth and “eyebrows” on with a piping bag and a round tip. After that, I continued piping my black stars around it, filling in the entire head.

Finally, I fit a piping bag with another star tip, filled it with red icing, and covered the body, working around my black spots. It’s tedious to do a cake this way, but it goes relatively quickly, and I like the way it looks when it’s done.

As finishing touches, I used black pipe cleaners for the antennae, and wrote out “Happy Birthday Vivienne” in white buttercream. I didn’t thin it out enough, so I had a little trouble writing with it—that’s why it didn’t turn out as neat as I would’ve liked. But I was too tired to try to wipe the whole thing clean, thin the icing, refill the bag, and do it over again, so… I didn’t. :)

I did all of the decorating the night before the party, then stored my huge cake in the oven (which—I’ll state the obvious—was NOT on) overnight. I will typically do this with oversized cakes, just to “cover” them somewhat and get them out of the way. Also, it’s obviously not totally air tight, but it’s better than just being out in the room. It works well.

So that’s the cake. Let’s move on to the pretzels, shall we? These were a lot less complicated!

I first saw these on Pinterest, and even after clicking through a couple of different pins, I found that nothing took me to actual instructions. I didn’t really need them, as they are just dipped in candy melts, but I figured I’d still type up a quick tutorial here in case anyone is looking for a little guidance. Again, no photos—I only have two hands in the kitchen, and they’re usually covered in food. It doesn’t lend itself well to photography, and I don’t have the patience to stop what I’m doing every couple of minutes to take pics!

I bought big sourdough pretzel twists for the job, which ended up being a good size. I started with the red candy melts, as the surface area it covers is much larger than the black. I melted the candy melts (Wilton) according to package instructions, then stirred it really, really well to get it smooth. Holding onto the bottom of the pretzel (the area that is black in the finished ones pictured above), I held the pretzel over my candy melt bowl and spooned the melted candy over the pretzel. I found this worked better than dipping since I didn’t end up with as much excess on the pretzel. Once covered, I shook off any excess and then placed on a sheet of wax paper to dry.

Once the red part was dry, I got to work on the black for the head. Now, one thing that was a little frustrating was that when trying to dip the other side of the pretzel, I had to hold onto the red part—and the little bit of body heat from my fingertips caused the candy to smudge. It doesn’t take much heat to melt it! So after one or two of them, I caught on to this and used a rubber oven mitt thingy to hold onto the pretzels instead. Problem solved.

Again, I used the spoon method for the black, making sure to cover any remaining pretzel spots. Then, back onto the wax paper they went. While I waited for the black to set, I put my remaining black candy (already melted) into a plastic squeeze bottle and used it to draw on the black spots. By the time I was done with that, the heads were dry enough for me to add eyes.

You could use white candy melts (or melted white chocolate chips, even) to make the eyes, but I used royal icing instead. This is because I already had it on hand to make the cookies (you can see them in this post), so it was easiest for me to not have to melt another color. I used a toothpick to dab little blobs of icing onto the pretzels, and I was done.

I let the pretzels fully set on the wax paper overnight, then stored in an airtight container (with wax paper between the stacked layers of pretzels) until party day. FYI—I made these on Tuesday or Wednesday night, and the party was on Saturday. They held up well.

I hope all of this helps. I also tried to link to relevant things within this post. Feel free to ask me any questions about the cake or pretzels. Enjoy!