Hi, Ho! Kermit the Frog here!

I was contacted via my Facebook page and asked could I do a Kermit the Frog cake by any chance. Sure as Barney in How I Met Your Mother says......"Challenge Accepted"!! So I found a great example of a Kermit Cake online and decided to give it a go. Yes making a cake with Kermit the Frog jumping out of a parcel is a tad ambitious but I managed it........eventually. The actual cake itself was standard Victoria sponge mixture, divided out in to two 8-inch square tins with fudge icing. Whilst it was baking away nicely in the oven, I made up the different colour fondant icings that I needed; purple, green, red, pink and black. Now I must mention that I was also making an Australian Flip Flop Cake for my friends' Bon Voyage party (will blog next), so had spare sponge in order to make Kermit's head. If you want to make extra pieces for the top of a cake, then you could just make the sponge mixture times 1.5 so you could make three 8-inch cake tins. Once the two 8-inch square tins were cooked it was a matter of cooling down, filling and covering with chocolate fudge icing.....simples.

Now for the science bit!!  I could have just made his head out of a lump of icing, but I said I'd give the sponge head a go! I needed to make Kermit's head and body, in correct proportion to each other, but with the effect of his open mouth. I can easily say there was a sponge massacre when I was done! It was very tricky trying to get the head to be two sponge circles open-mouthed, but I managed it in the end. This really is the beauty of fondant icing, you can just cover a multitude of shoddy work!!!!! I placed a bamboo stick through the cake and stuck his body and head on it so it could all stay upright (genius strike again!). His arms were just rolled out lengths of green fondant, pushed a bamboo stick in to it, and rolled it around it again so the stick was covered.

Next was the pink ribbon effect. I rolled wide pieces of pink fondant out flat, cut in straight line with a pizza cutter, and just my magical edible glue to stick it on to give the effect of a wrapped present. I rolled and cut out thinner pieces of the pink fondant for the curled ribbons. Now this I did impress myself with! I got a wooden spoon, wrapped cling film around the handle, then wrapped the thin strips of icing around the handle and left it aside to harden up a bit. So it was just a matter of tidying up Kermit's body and the actual cake by putting some more purple icing, as if he has popped out of the box. The I took the coiled pink icing, slipped them off the wooden spoon (this was the purpose of the cling film) and glued it on to the cake, tucking in the end bits under the large ribbon bits (if ya get my drift!).

Apart from the Electric Picnic cake, this was my first real 3-D cake, and I might as well say it was a success! I'm delighted with how it's turned out. I've learned a few lessons in how to put together cake toppings and features, so I hope it won't take me as long the next time.