Pudsey Bear Cake Recipes

Steps:

• Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Grease 2 x 20cm sandwich tins and line the bases with baking parchment. Apart from the hundreds & thousands, beat all the cake ingredients together in a large bowl, using an electric whisk, until fully combined and smooth. Quickly but gently stir through the hundreds & thousands - don't mix too much or the colour from them will bleed. (To get the spotty effect in the sponge, you won't be able to use naturally dyed hundreds & thousands as the colour will bleach out during cooking. We used Wilton Rainbow Sprinkles available from Amazon.)
• Divide the mixture between the tins and bake for 15-18 mins, until risen and golden brown. Leave to cool a little in their tins before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
• On a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar, roll out the yellow fondant and cut out a 20cm circle - use the loose base of a sandwich tin as a guide. Brush the top of one of the cakes with a little raspberry jam and pop the fondant circle on top. Roll out the coloured icings in turn and cut out small circles - you could use the wide end of a piping nozzle for this. Dot a small amount of jam under each circle and arrange on top of the yellow fondant.
• To make the filling, tip the cream and lemon curd into a large bowl and whip by hand to a soft peak. Sandwich the cakes together with remaining raspberry jam, topped with a layer of lemon cream.

Steps:

• Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6 and line a baking sheet with baking parchment. Put the butter in a bowl and beat it with electric beaters until soft and creamy. Beat in the sugar, then the egg and vanilla, and finally the flour to make a dough. If the dough feels a bit sticky, add a little bit more flour and knead it in.
• Roll the dough out so it's about the thickness of a £1 coin. Cut out shapes using a Pudsey bear cutter or cut around a template you have made. Re-roll off-cuts and repeat.
• Transfer the biscuits to the baking sheet and bake for 8-10 mins or until the edges are just brown. Leave to cool completely.
• To decorate the biscuits: Mix the icing sugar with enough water to make a stiff paste then roll the white fondant out to 5mm thick and cut into strips to make Pudsey's eye bandage. Stick it on with the white icing. Decorate with polka dots using coloured icing pens. Make his eye, nose and mouth with the black sugar paste and add a little dot of white icing to the eye. Stick the features down with more icing. Repeat the process with most of the biscuits and decorate the rest with icing simply sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. Will keep for three days in a biscuit tin.