LADYBUG PICNIC

I did a ladybug theme for ZGirl’s birthday. By “theme”, I mean that the plates had ladybugs on them; her invitations were ladybugs and the cake was a ladybug. After that, I got lazy and just bought red accouterments.

I tried to get a ladybug cake pan, but they were sold out. Instead I saw a cake pan for sports balls (I feel as if I need to qualify that statement with the “sports” adjective as I’m going to be referring to my baby girl’s cake here), and decided that it would work better. Each half circle could be a small ladybug. The perfect size for a one year old to mash up.

Here’s the counter space I was working on. I don’t get how any one can bake neatly.

I was a little disappointed in that the instructions claim I should only need one cake mix to fill both halves. Not quite enough. If I had to have a perfect (sports) ball, I would need to mix up two. Again, no biggie since I wasn’t depending on feeding a bunch of people with the cake.

I outlined how I wanted the icing to be applied and then mixed my colors and started with the black filling in the face and the line down the middle. Then I came in with the red. I decided at the last minute not to make the dots on the ladybug out of icing and instead went with the mini oreo cookies.

The eyes were made with mini oreos, as well. I just scrapped oreo icing and piled them up on one cookie to make them bulge a bit, then smeared a bit of butter cream icing on them and dabbed that into blue sprinkles for the irises.

ZGirl seemed to enjoy it. Briefly. What you won’t be able to see is that after she demolished it, she suddenly banished it to the floor with a few well-aimed swipes of her hand. I swear she was bitch-slapping it.

That’s my girl.