Winnie the Pooh birthday cake

by Jodie
(Ballina, Australia)

This year I decided to go with a winnie the pooh cake for my daughter's first birthday.

Once I found the winnie the pooh cake tin, the rest was easy.

I decided to go with a basic buttercake, here's the recipe. This one uses lots of eggs but makes a lovely cake..

Melted butter, to grease tin
3 cups self-raising flour
1 cup plain flour
2 cups caster sugar
300g butter, cubed, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups milk
6 eggs, at room temperature
3 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 150°C. Brush a round 25cm (base measurement) cake pan with the melted butter to lightly grease and line the base and sides with baking paper.

Place the self-raising flour, plain flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs and vanilla essence in a large mixing bowl. Use an electric beater to beat on low speed for 30 seconds or until just combined. Increase the speed to high and beat for 1-2 minutes or until the mixture is thick and all the butter is incorporated. Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan.

Place cake on middle to low shelf of the oven and bake for 2 1/2 hours or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Remove from oven and set aside for 10 minutes. Turn onto a wire rack to cool.

**NOTE- any left over cake mixture I put into cupcake trays and baked.

To Decorate- make a batch of icing

185g butter, softened
2 1/4 cups icing sugar mixture
2 tablespoons milk

Put a little aside and color black- this used to draw the outline. Now put half aside, and use food coloring to make the winnie the pooh orangey/yellow color. Now just use a star tip to go over the body. Once you've finished, color some more of the icing red, and do the top, and then dark blue for the hunny pot.