Children's Party Cakes Recipes - Spider's Web Cake

Ingredients

• 20cm round deep sponge cake

• 225g butter icing

• 45ml apricot jam, warmed and sieved

• 30ml cocoa powder

• chocolate vermicelli

• 40g marzipan

• yellow, red, black and brown food coloring

• 225g icing sugar

• 15-30ml water

• 25cm round cake board

• 2 small greaseproof paper piping bags

• wooden cocktail stick

• star nozzle

• 8 candles and holders

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Method:

1. Split and fill the cake with half the butter icing. Brush the sides with apricot jam, add the cocoa to the remaining butter icing then smooth a little over the sides of the cake. Roll the sides of the cake in chocolate vermicelli. Place on the board.

2. For the spider, tint the marzipan yellow. Roll half of it into two balls for the head and body. lint a small piece red and make three balls and a mouth. lint a tiny piece black for the eyes. Roll the rest of the marzipan into eight legs and two smaller feelers. Stick together.

3. Gently heat the icing sugar and water over a pan of hot water. Use two-thirds of the glace icing to cover the cake top.

4. lint the remaining glace icing brown and use it to pipe concentric circles on to the cake. Divide the web into eighths by drawing lines across with a cocktail stick. Leave to set.

5. Put the rest of the chocolate butter icing into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle and pipe a border around the web. Put candles around the border and the spider in the centre.