Ladybug Birthday Cake and Cupcakes

ladybug cake panThere are so many wonderful and easy-to-make options for a ladybug birthday cake! The ladybug’s simple shape and distinctive markings means that whatever your baking and decorating skill level, you’ll be able to create a beautiful cake confidently. Browse through these ideas for the perfect solution.

Ladybug Cake – Cake Pan
A fairly simple Lady Bug cake solution is to use a Ladybug Cake pan (as seen to the right). Simply bake a cake using your favorite cake recipe. The result is a cake already shaped like a Ladybug that just needs to be decorated!

Domed ladybug cake
For that perfect, three-dimensional domed ladybug cake, you’ll need an ovenproof mixing bowl or a dome shaped cake pan. Depending on the size of your party, you may need anything from an eight-inch diameter up. Use a home recipe or cake mix to fill the bowl or pan about 2/3 of the way up, and fill a muffin cup with batter as well. When the big cake is cool, frost it with vanilla frosting and use Wilton red color mist to spray the cake red. This will result in a true red color, whereas mixing red food coloring into the frosting will only make it pink.

Peel the paper from the baked muffin, frost it with chocolate frosting, and set it next to the big cake. This will be the ladybug’s head. Cover the head completely with licorice wheels. Now use licorice laces to make the line down the ladybug’s back, and more licorice wheels to make her spots. Finish up with thick licorice rope, cut into short lengths, for the ladybug’s legs (six on each side of the cake) and for her antennae (stick two short lengths into the cake so that they stand up). Finally, use two white chocolate wafers, with dark chocolate chip pupils, for the ladybug’s eyes. For added effect, cut a leaf-shape out of heavy cardboard and cover it with shiny green wrapping paper. Serve the ladybug on the leaf!

Ladybug Edible Image Topper
Another idea for a ladybug cake is a Ladybug edible image cake topper. Simply bake a rectangular (or square) cake and apply the edible image topper to the cake. Your cake is decorated quickly and looks very good!
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Ladybug Cupcake Ideas
Cupcakes make a great birthday cake alternative as they are easier to clean-up, everyone gets a personalized cake and they are typically easier to create. Check out these Lady Bug cupcake ideas below.

Ladybug cupcakes
These adorable cupcakes look like a crowd of baby ladybugs, and they’re easy to whip up. Make a batch of cupcakes and cover them with vanilla frosting. Spray them red with Wilton Red Color Mist. Now decorate with licorice shoelaces for the lines down their backs, chocolate chips for their dots, and a chocolate wafer for their face. Pipe two little white eyes and a smile on the wafer.

Ladybug-on-a-leaf cupcakes
These cupcakes are adorable, and very easy to make. Bake your own cupcakes and frost them with homemade or canned frosting (to save time, you can also purchase store-bought, frosted cupcakes to decorate). Tint marzipan or fondant green (you’ll find a good, simple marshmallow fondant recipe at Group Recipes) and cut out simple leaf shapes, either free-hand or using a leaf-shaped cookie cutter. Lay a green leaf on each cupcake, and place a chocolate foil-wrapped ladybug on it, securing it with a dot of frosting. Alternatively, you can make little ladybugs using a red candy wafer and Wilton black tube icing. Pipe the line down the ladybug’s back, her dots, her little black face and six black legs.

Baby ladybug cupcakes
For a very simple but effective cupcake design, frost cupcakes with green icing and scatter tiny ladybug sugar decorations over them.

If you’re planning to serve ladybug cupcakes, consider serving them on a three-tiered foam cupcake stand. You can decorate the stand with leaves and flowers cut from paper or craft foam to create a garden for the ladybugs. Make a few taller flowers on bamboo or pipe cleaner stems and push them into the center of the top tier for a spectacular effect.

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