Molly's Hedgehog cake

Molly turned 2 last week and I have been trawling through Pinterest for months ( probably since her last birhday to be honest!!) looking for inspiration for an easy but spectacular looking birthday cake. I finally decided on a Hedgehog cake as this seemed to tick all the boxes - easy - chocolate - no need for a special tin - yes this was the one. I decided not to have a party for Molly as I am so pregnant ( 37 weeks!) that I didn't want a lot of 2 year olds to clear up after so as we have had such lovely weather decided to invite some friends to a local park and took along some snacks and drinks and of course cake. Well , the park was fun except there was a torrential downpour and we were all huddled under umbrelllas! It is a birthday I won't forget! Molly wasn't impressed and sat crying in her pushchair whilst the rain came lashing down....


Look at that sad face...


Back to the cake - I used my favourite throw everything in the mixer cake from the lovely Nigella Lawson that can be found here  or it can be found in her cookbook Feast. I didn't use the recipe for the icing but cheated as I hadn't left enough time to make icing as well and used Dr Oetker chocolate frosting which is delicious and comes out a lovely dark hedgehog colour! I made the cake the day before and then got up at a ridiculous hour to cut it all up and assemble it before getting to the park for 10am!  You cook the cake in 2 round sandwich tins and ice them together with buttercream ( or cheat like me with ready made!) and then cut them like this


The 2 sides are put together to form the rounded bit of the body and then stacked on top of the main part of the cake and the triangles at the front are discarded ( or eaten at 8am ..) I didn't take another photo as I was running late as usual and also forget so have only got the final version. The whole cake is covered in butter cream and then chocolate buttons are inserted for spikes ( again if I had more time I would have used a lot more) and the eyes and nose are from a bag of Liquorice Allsorts.



I am really pleased with how he turned out - my mum did say that he looked a bit scary - maybe it was the eyes! Anyway the children and adults all appreciated eating it in the rain!