How to Make a Super Simple Ladybug Cake

Start by baking the cake in a 2.5 liter, oven safe, Pyrex bowl. It should say "oven safe" on the bottom. One boxed cake mix, fits easily in this size bowl.

Make sure to grease, and flour the bowl well (or use Pam's Baking Spray, that already has flour in it).


Bake the cake at a temperature 25 degrees Fahrenheit lower, than recommended for the recipe, or mix. So, if the recipe recommends baking at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, bake it at 325 degrees, and start checking it, with a wooden skewer, at 30 minutes.

If the top begins to look very well done, but the inside is still not done (meaning the skewer is coming out covered in batter), turn the oven down another 15 degrees, and keep checking the cake, every 5 to 10 minutes. My cake took an extra 25 minutes.


Turn the cake out onto a plate to cool. And, prepare your frosting.

I made one batch of butter cream frosting (3/4 stick of butter softened, 2 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, 1/4 teaspoon vanilla, and 2 teaspoons of milk, or so), reserving a small bit of the white frosting, adding unsweetened baker's cocoa (about two tablespoons), a little more milk, and black food coloring to about a fourth of what was left, and red food coloring to the rest.


Spread a little of the chocolate frosting onto the front of the cake, with a butter knife, to make a semi-circular face.


Frost the rest of the cake with the red frosting.



Place the remaining chocolate frosting, the vanilla frosting, and a small bit of the red into Ziploc-type baggies, and snip a very small hole in one of the bottom corners of each bag.


Use the black frosting to pipe on a line down the back...


...and a few spots. Start with a circle, then fill it in with more frosting, and smooth it down with the tip of the bag, as you go.


Use the white frosting, followed by the black, for eyes.



And, if you like, pipe on a red, smiley, mouth. Ladybugs don't really grin, but I thought the cake looked a little mean without a smile.



It's great to be a homeschooler.