When we told baker Lisa that we’d picked her leopard print cake to be our Cake of the Month for February she said it was, and we quote, “the highlight of her year”! It is only March, but we’ll take that!

PS: We reckon the world would be a better place with a bit more leopard print in it.

Name of baker: Lisa Stewart
Name of cake: Luscious leopard print cake

Ingredients:
Easy chocolate cake recipe from BBC Good Food
Butter icing
Jam
Ready to roll icing
Gel food colouring

Method:
I started by making two large chocolate bases, then flattened them off and stacked with some butter icing and jam in between. I then added a layer of butter icing around the cakes before covering with the ready to roll icing.

To get the animal print effect I used a deep purple and black gel colouring, adding uneven blotches of the deep purple all over the cake and then drawing black outlines around these. There are loads of amazing tutorials on YouTube if you want to try it yourself!

To complete the cake, I made a little bow and some numbers out of ready to roll icing.

About the baker:
I recently got quite in to baking after I started making cakes for friends’ birthdays. One of my friends then sent me a link to Free Cakes for Kids and I thought it was such a great idea – I’d get to perfect my cake decorating skills whilst doing something for people in my local community.

Not only is it great fun throwing glitter and sparkles on a cake but it’s also a lovely feeling knowing that your cake could help to make someone’s day special. Everyone deserves to be made a fuss of on their birthday and I like to think my cakes help with that!