Red Panda Cake

Hi bakers!

So, recently on twitter you might have seen that I have been making a red panda cake as a surprise birthday cake. I hope this has inspired you all to give it a go yourself and to make life a little bit easier for you.. here's my step by step guide on how to make him!

Firstly you need a 7inch cake, I like to make a basic Victoria sponge cake and flavour it with a few drops of vanilla extract. You can make any flavour cake you like but I find vanilla is most suitable for decorating because it can get a little sickly especially with the amount of icing you're about to slap on!

Before you start pre-heat your oven to gas mark 4 and grease and line your 7inch round cake tin.

For my vanilla cake I weigh 4 eggs and use this weight in self raising flour, margarine and caster sugar. I like to be lazy and mix it all up in my kitchen aid food mixer but it's just as easy to mix it all up yourself in a bowl using a wooden spoon. Also add your flavouring, if, like me you love vanilla, add a few drops of vanilla extract.

Once the cake mixture is looking nice and creamy, pour it into your lined cake tin and into the oven for 25-30 minutes. 

It will look golden brown when ready and you should be able to put a skewer in and it come out clean. 

Next put it on a wire rack and in a place where it can be left to cool for a few hours (this is very hard to do in my house with 2 greedy cats and boyfriend!)

Once cooled you are ready to carve out the basic shape of the cake.

To do this, you need to cut out 3 small triangles to make the ears (I also cut away a little of the cake on top of the ears to give the cake some depth.) Use one of the triangles of cake to make the nose of the panda.

You then need to add a crumb coat. I use 2 parts icing sugar to 1 part butter to make my butter icing for the crumb coat.

Once your crumb coat has been added to the cake, you can add the next layer of icing. I use ready to roll out icing because I like the finish it gives to the cake, however you can add another layer of butter icing if you like.

To decorate I used a star shaped nozzle on my piping bag and piped on the orange fur. I made the ears, nose, eyes, eyebrows, mouth and brown fur using coloured roll out icing. If you struggle to make eyes (to start with I found them very fiddly to do!) you can buy already made eyes or even use plastic goggly eyes you would find in craft shops.

The basic shape for this cake can be used to make any animal with small ears on their heads or even a frog (if you use the 'ears' for their eyes).

I hope this helps!

Love 

Melissa xx

(P.S. any feedback welcome!)