honeybear cake for my beautiful niece

My littlest niece recently (ok, Thanksgiving weekend) turned 2. She is so delicious, with the softest cheeks you can imagine. Her favorite toy buddy is Honeybear, her lovey, who goes everywhere with her, so we thought it would be fun to make a Honeybear cake with the bear peeking over the edge of a giant vat of honey. 

Here's the bear:

And here's the cake:

And here's the delighted girl with her two buddies together!

I hand-cut Honeybear out of fondant using a template I sketched after looking at a picture of the real lovey. I used a few brown tones for his paws/face and head/ears, though it was hard to get them perfect; the brown food coloring often looks too pink, and I'm not quite sure how to get that golden tone, even though I tried variously adding gold and yellow food coloring. Anyway, I cut out a flat bear and layered on the muzzle, nose, and eyes. I added some texturing, hitting the fondant gently with the back of a small knife to look like fur. The paws were kept separate because I wasn't sure where Honeybear was going to perch. I left the fondant to dry for several days so it would be sturdy enough to stand up without caving in. Although it would have been cute to press the bear to the back of the cake, like he was climbing up the jar, I knew the fondant would slide down, so I just inserted it into the cake about an inch from the edge. (The frosting around the edge was fairly thick, and the fondant needed to be jammed more into the cake than into the frosting; it kept trying to lean backward.) Anyway, it stayed upright as long as it needed to, and the birthday girl loved it.

The cake was chocolate - my family is a chocolate family - with vanilla frosting. Perfect for a 2-year-old family party! Happy birthday, A!

Print the chocolate cake recipe.
Print the vanilla frosting recipe.