Cake decorating - for kidlets

Not a lot to tell you about this one, but I just had to share the photo. The recipe is the Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake from Feast which I love so much. This is the version for the birthday of our beautiful boy turning ONE! His big brother 3 and big sister 6 decided a Ladybird was called for. We used the usual frosting, but didn't cover the cake with it completely. We filled it with the frosting, we put the frosting around the edges, and put just a little on the top. I added a small amount of black food colouring as well, just to make the face a little darker. For the carapace of the bug, I was told by my children the 'proper' colour should be 'reddish-orangy-pink'. So I did as I was told. All it is, incidentally is thick cream. Not whipped, it just comes this thick in the tub here in Australia. It's as spreadable as cream cheese. We added just a little sugar to the cream, but a fair amount of food colouring to get it to look just so.

The children took to the cake with Smarties. They divided the colours up, decided which colour should go where, and only employed me to mark out the shape of the wings. The eyes are two little pink marshmallows with silver cachous around the edges, and speaking of edges there are other smarties around the circumference of the cake. 'Less is more'? Not likely! Certainly not when you're a little one let loose on a chocolate cake!

Here then, is our very happy Ladybird Cake. Children are happy, their baby brother was delighted, and naturally ended up with cake in his ears, hair and, well, you name it really! There is some irony in the fact the children were adamant I perfect the colour of the Ladybird to look 'real life' and then they took to it with a myriad of colours for the spots, I love kid's rules!

Happy Birthday Baby Boy!!!