Hula Bear Cake and Cupcakes

I was asked to bake a cake for one of my co-worker’s birthdays in March so I decided to finally try out a decorating idea I had saved from a blog I found last summer – check it out here at Grin and Bake It.  Basically you just decorate little Teddy Grahams in bikinis and grass skirts and then decorate the cupcakes with a beach/ocean theme. 

Cake tends to go fast at work, so I made two 9 inch cakes (stacked them) and then cupcakes, as well.  I went with Funfetti for the cake as that is her favorite kind and decided to make chocolate cupcakes for any of the chocolate lovers at work.   No crazy recipes for this – just used boxes of Funfetti and chocolate fudge.  I made a couple batches of the Wilton buttercream recipe since I knew this type of decorating would need a thicker frosting.  I also used a tub of the Funfetti frosting for the filling between the two cake layers as you can’t have a Funfetti cake without the frosting!

First, here are the cupcakes – they came out so cute!

 

To make sand, I crushed graham crackers in a big ziplock plastic bag with a potato masher until they were very crumby.  I used gummy Life Savers for the inflatable tubes the bears are swimming in.  For the waves, I used the Wilton tip #1M that is used to make big swirls on cupcakes.  Instead of doing a swirl, I just made 2 or 3 lines and zig-zagged across the cupcake as I frosted so they were wavy.  All of the decorating materials I found at Walmart and Target – including Pepperidge Farm chocolate and marshmallow-flavored Goldfish and Finding Nemo fruit snacks (yes, that’s Nemo in the above pic!). 

To actually decorate the Teddy Grahams, I used the Wilton piping tip #1 and buttercream frosting.  I started by outlining two triangles for the bikini part and then used a toothpick to fill in the rest of the triangle.  Then I made small lines as straps to connect the bikini.  For the grass skirts, I used a different Wilton tip that is most commonly used to make grass or the mum type of flowers (I can’t remember the # of the tip but it has several small holes in it).  I dragged the frosting a little so it would cover the entire legs of the bear.

Here’s some pictures of the cake…for some reason, I don’t have a picture of the entire cake but hopefully you get the idea:

 

I started by frosting the entire cake in the blue frosting (including the top).  I then mixed a little orange icing coloring into some white frosting and carefully layered the orange frosting on top of half of the cake.  This was just so the frosting wouldn’t show as much when I put the crushed graham crackers crumbs on top for the beach half.  For the ocean, I used a little piping gel to smooth over the top of the ocean.  I dipped a toothpick in royal blue icing color to make swirls in the ocean so it was more wave-like. 

The bears laying on the beach are laying on Airheads.  I melted those in the microwave for about 5 seconds (any longer and they get too melty!), cut them in half, and formed a little pillow at the top by folding over part of the Airhead.  I used more of the chocolate flavored Goldfish to decorate the base of the cake.  Some drink umbrellas were used to decorate the beach part.

This was very popular at work – the birthday girl and everyone else loved it :)  It definitely took a long time to decorate the bears but other than that, it wasn’t too difficult to make all the other components.  I would suggest making the bears and just the cakes one day and store them in airtight containers overnight.  Then on the next day, make all the frosting and actually decorate the cakes.  Happy decorating!

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