Squiggles' Ladybug Cake

As I've mentioned before, since making Bubbles a cake out of fruit for her second birthday, my husband (Numnut) and I've become fast fans of fruit cakes.

We decided to get a little more creative this year and we created a Peppa Pig 'cake' for Bubbles to take to daycare and a train 'cake' for her birthday party.

Having made such great fruit cakes for Bubbles we had to come up with something equally as good for Squiggles first birthday. Squiggles got to have 2 parties this year, one combined one with Bubbles with my in-laws and her very own one with my family. Both parties had a buggy theme and we decided to make her a ladybug fruit cake. The one for the combined party (pictured above) worked but wasn't fantastic, it served as a practice and Numnut and I talked and then came up with the cake below. We were both really please with it and unlike Bubbles train cake which was pretty much all done by Numnut we divided the work pretty evenly. Anyway, without further a do, here is Squiggle's Lady Bug cake and how we went about making it:

`What we used:
1/2 a seedless watermelon
1/2 a large rockmelon, with centre removed (we were originally going to use a whole rockmelon and just slice a bit off so it sat flat but the rockmelons at the market were massive-so big in fact that the half I brought home was bigger than one my mum had sitting on her window sill!)
Approx. 20 red grapes, sliced in half widthways
A large orange (very large, it was almost as big as my mum's rockmelon!)
One large strawberry, I sliced it widthways, picked my 2 favourite pieces and at the rest :)
3 large pears, cored and sliced thinly lengthways
375g white chocolate melts (I normally like to keep our kids parties processed sugar free but  I really wanted a black head)
2tbs oil
Black food dye (I didn't think we could get it here in Aus but was excited to find Coles stock it!)
Toothpicks
Kebab sticks

How we made it:
First off Numnut placed the pears on a large platter with the edges over hanging. The idea behind this was to make it look like the ladybug was sitting on a leaf, I originally wanted to use kiwi fruit but Numnut asked for pears instead because a) he doesn't like kiwi fruit b) he pointed out the kiwi would get squished by the watermelon and c) he loves pears.

Numnut used his crazy knife skills to carve the skin off the watermelon but reserve it's round shape. I should have thought and got him to leave a strip in the middle but didn't so he then cut some thin strips from the skin and we used toothpicks to fix them to the watermelon.

I then placed the watermelon flat side down on the platter and placed the grapes on the watermelon-the wetness of the grapes and watermelon meant that surface tension did the job of holding them in place and there was no need for toothpicks to hold them in place.

Numnut cut the orange into six segments and fixed them to the side of the melon with toothpicks-he found that pushing the toothpicks into the melon first and then attaching the orange worked best.

I then melted the oil and chocolate in a double boiler over low heat, as the chocolate melted I added a little black food dye at a time until I was happy-ish. The chocolate went more of a silver-blue colour than black but it became apparent that adding more black food dye wasn't going to change that. (If we did this again I'd just use milk or dark chocolate.) Then somehow I managed to almost burn the chocolate (Mum says it's because I'm not used to cooking on gas) so I added a little more oil to bring the chocolate back to a spreadable state-I have no idea if that was the right thing to do but it worked!

Now, what I should have done is remove the centre of the rockmelon but instead I poured the chocolate on to the skin of rockmelon and spread it-I couldn't get a smooth surface so enlisted Numnut's help as his plaster skills come in handy for cake decorating!

Numnut then pierced the rockmelon with some skewers and I lifted it up whilst he scooped out the centre-oops!

I placed the strawberries on the melon as eyes and then placed the melon in the fridge to set.

Again, something we should have done before I poured chocolate on the rockmelon-once the chocolate was set Numnut carved part of it so it would sit against the watermelon more firmly.

Finally I cut 2 skewers to length pierced them in the rockmelon as antennae, placing a grape on each end. Numnut then cut a slice of pear into a smile and I fixed it to the head with toothpicks.

Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.  You know you're infant/child best, use your own judgement-considering your infant/child's temperament, habits, behaviour and development before you play with a new play medium.