Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Can you make this without the sugarpaste? i.e. pipe the buttercream straight onto ganache?
I made one of these as a Pudsey Bear for Children in Need (using yellow ganache!), and when you cut the cake it looked like there was a lot of icing in proportion to the cake.

I’d also wondered this, as I thought it was a lot of icing, so when I was at the NEC, I asked the young woman who was on Pauls stand, and she said it would be fine to leave out the sugarpaste. Please let me know how it turns out.

Hi Monumental cakes

I just wondered whether you have tried piping the teddy’s fur directly onto the ganache. I made the teddy a few weeks ago and covered it with a very thin coating of fondant to ensure a seal in the ganache. Ganache can crack and break in places which are joined together as in the teddy legs and feet. If you left the fondant off, how did your teddy turn out? Tnx

Hi, I made the cake this weekend without the fondant. It worked, after a fashion, but it was messy (a) because my ganache (being pink rather than dark) was a little runny, and (b) transferring the cake from the preparation board onto the final cake drum would have been easier because the fondant would have held it together better. Nevertheless, because all of the flaws can be covered by the piped buttercream, the end result was brilliant and loved by all! Thank you.

I’ve been asked to make Pudsey…. If I just use yellow food colour on the buttercream will that be ok?? I like this bear method cos piping covers a multitude of my sins!!

I used yellow paste food colouring to make a Pudsey using this method and it worked fine.

Ah great! Thank you!

I’ve made this a few times and never used fondant – always good and sturdy. I use the bottom template to cut out the same shape cake card and assemble the cake on this and cover in ganache, then it’s easy and safe to transfer the cake on the cake card to the iced cake board, ready to pipe buttercream. i’m actually about to pipe one of these this evening with white ganache rather than buttercream, will post with the results!