3D Teddy Bear Cake! Part III: Decoration

And now for the final home stretch! If you've completed parts one and two, you're ready for part three. By the end of this step, your cake should look something like this:

Now, I've decorated my teddy bear cake to look like a panda, but you could do whatever kind of bear you like. You could make up some more chocolate icing and make him a simple teddy bear, or you could go completely mental with decorations. I've kept it nice and simple.

You will need:

• 10 ounces (300 grammes) white buttercream icing
• 10 ounces (300 grammes) chocolate buttercream icing, dyed black
• About 2 ounces (55 grammes) fondant icing
• Black and green food colouring
• A wafer stick
• A grass piping nozzle, or a clean toothbrush
• Any other decorations you'd like

What to do with them:

Spread or pipe the white and black icing onto the bear to mimic the colouring of a panda. I spread mine on then textured it with a toothbrush once it had set a little, but you can also use a grass nozzle to pipe on individual tufts of fur. That takes far too long for me, and gives me a cramp in my hand, so I use go low-tech.

If you're going the spreading and texturing route, use a new clean toothbrush with soft bristles. Also, it really helps if you have an offset palette knife to get into all the corners.

Dye a small amount of fondant green to make some leaves, and then dye a larger amount black to make his eye patches (rolled and cut out), nose (moulded with my fingertips) and mouth (made out of a thin fondant rope). Place the eye patches, nose, and mouth on the icing while it's still a little wet, then add in the eyes, which are made out of small discs of white and black fondant.

Place the wafer stick in place, and then decorate it with the leaves. If you like, you could make fondant bows, or little bugs or things to add extra interest. If you want to skip on the fondant altogether, you can just pipe on the appropriately coloured buttercream to make the facial features and leaves.

As you can see from the three parts of this tutorial, this is a long-winded and ambitious project. The results are cool, however I'll be returning to my traditional gateaux after this, and probably won't do another novelty cake for a while....