The Making of Sawyer's 'Bear' Cake

I knew I wanted to make Sawyer a bear cake...and this picture here was my inspiration...

I realize it's much better than my finished product - but at least it was a bit of inspiration!  I liked it because it was more 'bear' like than 'teddy' like.  The Wilton cake pan was too teddyish so I found this one...and ordered it from the states... The BUILD-A-BEAR PAN.  Sounds like it would be more teddyish than Wilton, but I found that it was more workable!  Maybe I'm just nuts!

So - in true Kristy fashion - I got excited about the pan BEFORE reading reviews and ordered it!  After we had the pan and I was about to bake (three weeks before party as trial run) I started to panic.  The reviews were quite similar...'great pan and amazing quality'.........'hard to keep cake in one piece....head too heavy'!  YIKES!  Well, away I went for my trial run.  Iced and all.  The next morning we came downstairs to the kitchen to a decapitated bear.  Head shattered on the floor.  PERFECT!  I avoided making the cake again for quite some time.  I left it until the last minute.  But I had a new plan.  A new cake recipe.  A new plan for cooling and icing!

It worked and the cake was awesome :)

I appreciate all the blogs out there and the reviews and tips and tricks.  It surely helped me - and I hope my post will help someone else!

Trevor was a big help in creating the base of the second cake!  We used this recipe...

When the cake pan was out of the oven we let it cool.  Once cooled, we flipped half the pan out.  Iced the middle of the cake and put them together.  We let that set in the fridge for a bit.  Then, when I was ready to ice, we took the whole cake out of the pan and put two wooden dowels in at an angle.  So far it was all solid!  A little side note...we struggled getting the cake out of the pan.  I had a panic attack when it was stuck in there.  My husband, the genius, thought, lets take a hairdryer to the pan (I never would have thought of this!) - it worked like a dream :)  I knew I wanted to use a base cake to look like grass...and I think sticking the dowels through into both cakes helped create some stability.

Another thing that I learned was to get the coloring I liked (dark brown) food color was not cutting it.  Adding cocoa and altering the buttercream recipe a bit was the way to go...and tasted way better than icing that was overdone with food coloring.

The grass icing tip is tough and took some practice getting used to.  It also required some softer frosting in order to get your hand to not give out on you!

All in all - it was a learning experience and it turned out just fine in the end :)

Sadly, I only took iPhone photos of the process...but they are better than nothing!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used almond slivers for the claws.

And yes, we made a second one for his cake smash...