"Oh Bother" - Pooh Bear

I met Lisa through a former roommate.  We were also fortunate enough to be in a really fun wedding together.  And when she asked me to make a Pooh Bear cake for a baby shower - I was pretty excited.  Then I found out she needed the cake on March 31.  Which meant I had to make the cake the day after I returned from a 10 day missions trip in Brazil.

Oh bother.

But how could I resist this new challenge?  That's right - I couldn't.

Lisa wanted a cake with Pooh Bear and his honey pot.  I decided to do a trial run before I left for Brazil since I was using a new cake recipe.

I used the Wilton 3d bear pan to make Pooh.  When you do a 3d cake like this - you need a different kind of cake so that it will hold together and not fall apart when you take it out of the pan.  They recommend using pound cake - but who eats pound cake with frosting?  So I tried this Chocolate Pudding Fudge recipe.  The first time I tried it, the cake tasted fine, but the bear didn't fare so well.

But I learned from my experience and the second time worked much better.

Baking the cake upside down

 I was really nervous about taking the cake out of the pan.  I feared that it wouldn't be able to support itself and would just tumble over.  I had a few issues caused by the use of the baking core inside the bear, but I knew that would look fine once it was covered with frosting.

Cooling the cake before removing it from the pan.

 So once I was brave enough to put the cake on the cake board, I began frosting it.  I used tip 18 red stars for the shirt and tip 18 yellow/ivory stars for Pooh.  At first it was hard to see Pooh Bear because the cake was chocolate.

 So he just looked like a chocolate bear with a red shirt and yellow pants.

I added the face detail before piping the stars on the face.

And then suddenly, there was Pooh!

Pooh Bear.  He looks rather mischievous.  And very cute.

Back view.

 Then I turned my attention to the honey pot.  I baked 3 6-inch round cakes using my normal Devil's Food cake recipe.  I filled the layers with chocolate fudge and chocolate chips.  I cut out a little bit of the top layer for the "honey" to fill in.

I iced the cake with blue buttercream frosting and piped "hunny" with the same yellow I used to make Pooh.

Then I used yellow candy melts to make the actual "honey" inside the pot.

I also dripped the candy on the sides of the honey pot cake.  I think that turned out pretty cool.  It was also a good way to cover up any holes or messy spots on the blue frosting.

Dripping honey.

Pooh Bear and his honey pot.
It looks like he is surprised by the size of the pot
and is chuckling with happiness.

 I made a few mini cupcakes with the leftover batter and frosted them with leftover blue and yellow frosting.  Then I set them around the cake board.  It just gave a nice little finishing touch to the cake.

I pinned the cake board to a styrofoam block underneath to help handle the weight of the cake and also so it wouldn't slide around in Lisa's car.  Hopefully it made it to the shower in one piece!

Overall I was very pleased with the results.  And so I'll leave you with a final thought from Pooh.

"'Well,' said Pooh, 'what I like best --' and then he had to stop and think.  Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but didn't know what it was called."

I think the cake captures that moment pretty well, eh?